


Take a Chance On Me

by Aja



Category: Angels in America - Kushner (Broadway Cast 2018) RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Broadway, Celebrities, M/M, New York City, Paparazzi, Pining, RPF, Social Media, The Tony Awards, The spirit of Mark Rylance is everywhere, Theatre, glitterati, is this love or method acting, mcarfield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 10:21:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 26,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17579051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: A bunch of McArfield fics and ficlets collected from the glorious summer haze of my time in Angels in America fandom. Features lots of pining, miscommunication, drunk confessions, and boys being dumb. Bonus Nathan Lane cameos!





	1. The one where they kiss at the stage door

**Author's Note:**

> This stage door kiss [actually happened.](https://mcarfield.tumblr.com/post/176807882880/bookshop-james-and-andrew-kissing-after-the-show)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This stage door kiss [actually happened](https://mcarfield.tumblr.com/post/176807882880/bookshop-james-and-andrew-kissing-after-the-show).

James has one mission in life at the moment, and that’s to get through this damn play and be the best Louis Ironson he can be without losing his mind over the fact that he gets to spend half of his waking life making out with Andrew Garfield.

Only, as with all things about this goddamn monster of a play, that’s far, far harder than it looks. This is partly because Andrew is amazing and adorable and incredibly, surprisingly passionate and articulate about, well, everything. He’s passionately articulate about this play, and Prior, and the absolute vital importance of  _Angels in America_  in 2017.  

And he’s passionately articulate about James — or at least about James’s acting. James knows this because of the number of times Andrew has gone into effusive rants, with or without James actually being present, about what an amazing actor he thinks James is. So, James usually goes onstage with confidence that his partner in all things believes in him, and it carries him through most nights with a buoyancy that works as a very nice countermeasure to the constant sense of emotional and physical exhaustion Louis leaves him with.

He’s tried not to obsess over the question of whether Andrew feels about him the way he feels about Andrew, and there are a hundred different reasons for that. Andrew looks at James like James is perpetually brilliant, but the problem is that Andrew also looks at everyone that way. He’s constantly trying to drink in the energy and light of everyone around him, like some kind of giddy human sunflower. It’s incredible that he doesn’t manage to set off all of James’s cynical settings, but honestly James just finds him… lovely.

James knows himself pretty well; he knows he’s on a razor’s edge when it comes to supplanting Louis’ feelings for Prior with his own feelings for Andrew. It’s impossible not to adore Andrew, just… impossible. But James would also prefer not to develop a deep, hopeless, one-sided crush on his  _straight_  (sigh) co-star, and James also knows that actors can often be hopelessly needy without returning the favor. Andrew at heart just wants everyone to love him; it’s his Achilles heel, and James has told him so often, but James also suspects the message is undermined by the fact that James likes Andrew  _so much_.

But they’ve got a long, grueling performance road still to travel, and James has been burned plenty of times by assuming incorrectly that whatever bond he had with another actor would survive once the play was all over. So: he’s absolutely not endangering his heart by wasting time wondering whether Andrew’s beats only for him.

Or so he thinks; and then the kiss happens.

It’s Easter weekend and the crowds are out, so Andrew’s swamped signing autographs at the stage door. James has already finished — the crowds mostly flock for Andrew, and he doesn’t like to get in the way, so he tries to go outside early, sign a few autographs, and then clear out before Andrew and Russell make the rounds. Tonight, however, some of the cast is headed to Denise’s for drinks after the show.

“James, make sure you fetch Andrew and take him with you,” she orders.

“Why me?” James asks. “It’s bloody cold out, you’re a torturer.”

Denise rolls her eyes at him. “Because you’re each other’s appropriate adult,” she says. “Now go on, he’ll stay outside forever catching cold if you don’t.”

Andrew’s always immersed when James finds him outside the stage door, and tonight is no different. “Hi, love,” he says to Andrew, and he doesn’t intend for his touch to turn into a caress — god knows they’re too intimate as it is — but he slides his hand gently over Andrew’s back before he’s thought about it.

Andrew glances up.

“Some of us are heading out to—” He halts. Andrew’s looking at him expectantly, lips parted, and James’s brain actually grinds to a complete halt for a moment as the realization hits;  _he wants me to kiss him_.

It all feels like slow motion, but can’t be more than a few milliseconds: James is tractor-beamed forward, tugged into the kiss by Andrew’s eyes and his gorgeous fucking mouth, and it’s barely a peck, but it’s  _Andrew_ and it’s  _them_ and it’s  _public_  and — Andrew just  _kissed_  him.

The thought bursts over him, right in chorus with the shrieks that erupt from the fans all around them:

Andrew  _likes_  him.

His grin is unstoppable, he can feel it splitting his face, and Andrew looks so  _smug_  and  _coy_ and James must look ridiculous but he can’t stop smiling. Andrew likes him, not just his acting, Andrew likes this, Andrew likes this thing and it’s  _their_  thing, they’re  _friends_ , and —

And James is such a fucking lost cause, honestly, who did he think he was kidding?

“You saucy minx,” he says, laughing and swatting Andrew’s arm. 

“I knew you couldn’t resist me, I knew it all along,” Andrew says, clearly delighted.

James tells him he’ll wait for him in the car, and then he beats a hasty retreat so he can piece himself back together.

It’s not like they don’t kiss, they kiss all the time; performative physical intimacy on and offstage is the language of theatre, and James recognizes it for what it is — just that, a performance. But a gratuitous kiss in public, where anyone can see them…

No, ridiculous. it’s Andrew, he’s like this with everyone, James watched that Golden Globes Spideypool kiss on loop just like everyone else did, he’s only human. And actually the fact he even knows what Spideypool is should tell him just how much trouble he’s gotten himself in.

Get yourself together, lad, he orders himself. You’re here to put on a very important and prestigious play full of social commentary and trenchant political invective, you’re not here to obsess over your co-star or keep tabs on every other time Andrew Garfield has been flirty and metrosexual with someone who isn’t you.

He’s fully convinced himself of this when Andrew slides into the car next to him. “Hey, you,” he says, taking James’s hand without another thought, and James tries not to look anything like infatuated.  “Thanks for waiting.”

James laughs as the car pulls out into the street. “Please, people wait on you hand and foot, the least I can do is hang out in a car for a minute or two.”

Andrew blushes. “Well, you don’t wait around for too many people,” he says. “I’m glad I get to be one of them.”  

And there it is, again, the smile splitting James’s face without his conscious control.

“Look at you,” Andrew says. “God, you look so…”

James turns to him, startled by the note in Andrew’s voice. “What?”

Andrew… Andrew shivers. His gaze drops to James’s mouth.  

And then his expression shifts into something hungrier; his eyes meet James’s own, and they’re dark with intent.

“If I’d known that all I needed to do to make you smile like that was to kiss you,” he says, voice going low, “I’d’ve had my mouth on you every night.”

All the breath leaves James’s body and all the air leaves the car at once.

They’re just crossing over Waterloo Bridge, and it suddenly feels to James as though he’s poised between a before and an after, between two radically different states of being and awareness.

He drags oxygen into his constricting lungs and tries to sound calm. “It’s not that I’m trying to hamper your self-expression or anything, Andrew, but is it not still the case that you’re straight?” He forces himself to meet Andrew’s eyes, which are still fastened to his, glittering and intense and unfairly earnest. “Because that’s one hell of a drug you’re offering, and I’d like to know how bad the withdrawal effects will be.”

And Andrew, because Andrew never makes anything easy for James, holds his gaze and leans in and murmurs, “Why don’t you kiss me again and find out?”

James’s mouth drops open, because he  _intends_  to put up a protest or say no, that this is a terrible, horrible, no-good dangerous idea and that Andrew’s inner Prior Walter is probably shrieking at him that he knows better, and why would Andrew toy with James’s sadly hilarious emotions when the play has already left them both feeling so vulnerable —

— but what actually happens is that he cups Andrew’s beautiful face and kisses him, deep and possessive and sure, the way he’s wanted to for months, and a delectable shudder rockets through Andrew’s entire body and he gasps and bends into James like he really is that fucking flower and James is the goddamn sun. He opens up to James and traces James’s mouth with his tongue and leans up to bite James’s ear.

“No, really not feeling very straight anymore,” he murmurs. “Really liking this new side you’re bringing out in me.”

“Oh, my god, you bloody infuriating  _harridan_ ,” James rasps, pressing kisses against Andrew’s perfect throat. “I’ve wanted you for  _months_ and you’ve just been  _torturing_  me—”

“No, never,” Andrew says, suddenly tender. He pulls back and cups James’s face in his hands. “Just trying to work up the courage.” He swallows. “The courage to make this real.”

James goes breathless all over again, but this time the feeling is completely different. He wraps his arms around Andrew’s waist, wondering distantly if that’s just going to be a thing he gets to, to  _do_  now, just wrap his arms around Andrew like he has the right, like he has standing permission to touch and lay claim to Andrew’s perfect body whenever he wants?

And then he has the surreal experience of wondering, in exactly the same moment, how he’s ever going to survive it — and also how the hell he survived without it before.

“This is the realest thing I know,” he says. “But, Andrew, you and me together, it can’t be a fluke, it means too much, there’s too much at stake, I  _feel_ too much—”

“I know, I’ve told myself every day since I met you,” Andrew whispers, pressing a rough kiss against James’ mouth.”God, don’t you think I’ve been trying not to fall for you? But it’s like standing under a waterfall trying not to get wet, you are this daily deluge of, of beauty and talent and brilliance and fury and  _you-ness_ and all I think about is your fucking  _mouth_  and I, I can’t, James, I,” and then they’re kissing again, and Andrew hitches himself up and over James’s lap and  _grinds_ against James’s thigh like he was born for this.

“Jesus  _christ_ ,” James yelps, because if Andrew is going to grind him right now they’re going to have to tip the driver a hell of a lot more and also probably skip Denise’s party altogether, and that is more than okay with James, but he needs, he needs ground rules, he needs boundaries, he needs to  _think_.

“Hold on,” he tries, and Andrew responds by slipping his hands beneath James’s shirt and palming James’ skin. “Oh, god, nevermind, don’t hold on, terrible idea,” James murmurs, biting the underside of Andrew’s jawline.

“So I think I might be demi,” Andrew says. He’s so pliant and twisty and bendable and, okay, they are definitely skipping Denise’s party.

“If you’re demisexual,” he manages, vaguely surprised he’s this coherent with a squirming Andrew Garfield in his lap, “then that means you…you’re in—”

He freezes.

Andrew pulls back and smiles at him, a little wry, a little smug. His cheeks are flaming and his hair is completely demolished, James has  _dreamt_  about seeing him this way.

“Means I fall in love first, and the rest doesn’t matter,” he says. He grins, slow, at whatever James’s face is doing. “Don’t look so shocked, it’s all your fault.”

“I wasn’t even sure if you  _liked_  me,” James blurts. ”I wasn’t even sure if we were, the kind of friends who’d stay friends after this is all over, I didn’t want to assume you’d—”

“Baby, that’s because this isn’t friendship,” Andrew says, rubbing his hands over James’ chest. “You and me — we’ve been falling in love since the day we met.” He presses a kiss against James’s forehead, and then against his nose. “And that terrifies me,” he says, breath catching. “But not enough to make me want to stop.”

“Don’t stop,” James says, knowing he sounds plaintive, but meaning it more than he’s ever meant anything in his life. He slides his hand up over the curve of Andrew’s precious face and holds him there. “Don’t ever stop.”

“I don’t ever plan to,” Andrew replies, and he kisses James all the way home.


	2. The one where it's a secret relationship

At first it’s a secret because neither of them are sure it’s real.

Their onstage relationship has bled so thoroughly into their real-life relationship that when the dam finally breaks and they find themselves making out in Andrew’s dressing room one night before the show starts, gasping and clinging and desperate for one another, there’s a moment where they lock eyes and decide by tacit mutual agreement not to talk about it, and James emerges — 10 minutes and an entire millennium later — completely unsure whether he actually just had Andrew Garfield’s cock in his mouth or whether it was all an elaborate roleplay.

Except the next night it’s Andrew who’s on his knees for James, blissed-out and perfect, and James is habitually late to call time, but now they’re suddenly both arriving earlier and earlier, and soon they don’t even bother with pretense; the moment Andrew’s door locks, James has him pressed up against it, his mouth hot against Andrew’s throat, Andrew murmuring his name in broken, bitten-off moans that turn into whispered pleas for more.

He’s so fucking eager for it, and christ, James just had no idea — he could have never imagined this, he could have never conceived of straight-but-burdened-by-the-task-before-him Andrew Garfield dragging his tongue over James’ nipples and shuddering when he makes James gasp.

He could never have imagined Andrew fucking Spider-Man Garfield casually, possessively palming his ass like it’s an item on display at Bergdorf; like he’s fucked and been fucked by other men a million times and now he just wants to skip the freakout and get down to the business of getting James hard and slicked and ready for him to play with.

He just, it’s so much so fast at first that he doesn’t know what to do with it  _except_ keep it a secret, because he’s still in shock and still not sure how far this goes for either of them.

Except then Andrew texts him on a Monday morning:  _come here_.

And James obeys, and Andrew spends the rest of the day slowly undoing him and exploring him and filling him and fucking him and it’s so intense and emotional that James almost doesn’t process what Andrew means at first when he kisses James’s shoulder and slides his hands around James’s waist and says softly, “We can’t talk about this.”

James blinks up at him, still muzzy-headed and blissed-out and post-coital. “You mean to anyone, or just to each other?” It comes out a bit rougher than he’d intended, but Andrew just grins at him and then leans down to bite James’s chin.

“No, we should definitely talk about it,” he says. “Just don’t tell anyone else.”

“I don’t do closets,” James tells him, and Andrew just fixes him with a calm, clear-eyed look that says, plain as day:  _But you’ll do this_.

“Jesus,” James breathes, “come here,” and he drags Andrew down into his pristine white bedsheets.

And so begins one of the headiest, most frustrating periods of James’s life.

Something James never fully understood up til now is that every single interaction he and Andrew have ever had was foreplay. All of it, every moment from December 2016 until now, was one giant precursor to sex.

Because now, now that they’ve started routinely putting parts of themselves inside one another, absolutely nothing about the way they interact changes at all. Andrew’s eyes are still hooded and intent on his face, he still shoots James the same coy looks and feeds him the same dorky not-quite come-on lines and still finds ways to gratuitously touch him at every opportunity.

Except that now James is aware that every look Andrew sends him, every laugh, every touch, every non-stop gratuitous moment of physical intimacy, is all one giant code for how completely Andrew would like to be sliding his tongue over James’s skin right now, or biting all the secret places on James’ body that he knows makes James gasp and cry out, or fitting himself into James’s arms and holding him wordlessly until they both reach for each other’s mouths at once.

He knows, now, that none of this is just Andrew being giddy and flirty and ambiguously metrosexual; that in fact all of this is about Andrew wanting him, wanting him the way no one’s ever wanted James before, because no one else has ever been in an intense two-year onstage relationship with James that has apparently left them both symbiotically attached at the loins.

Andrew wants James like James is his main source of daily nutrition; he wants James like James is the candy store and he’s the kid; he wants James in ways that leave James wrung out and exhausted and confused and so, so  _happy_  about all of it that half the time he thinks he’s in love and half the time he thinks he’s just lost his mind.

But Andrew also is kind of erratic and eccentric and bizarre, in ways that James has always found lovely and sweet, but has never fully appreciated the extent of until they started having a direct role in how often James gets sucked off in semi-public places by his secret boyfriend.

Andrew knows ways of fucking in secret that James has never even contemplated before. He summons James to high-class lounges and then subtly shepherds him into posh, private back rooms that James is sure didn’t exist before Andrew whispered a few words to the bartender. He’s got more secret entrances and exits out of hotels and theatres and restaurants than John Wick. And he’s  _shameless_. They’re at some banquet at the Marquis when Andrew drapes the tablecloth over their knees and slides his hand straight up the inner curve of James’ thigh. When he pulls James aside at Jo Allen’s and heads up a set of backstairs James swears he’s never seen before, James blurts, “Are you actually a magician? Are you actually Harry Potter?” and Andrew just winks at him and drags him into the back and into the shadows.

Andrew’s shameless in other ways, too. The theatre is the best cover, because inside the theatre no one really bats an eye if they get caught looking too cuddly offstage, because, hey, they’re method acting. And Andrew  _loves_  living under that shield of plausible deniability; he cuddles, he flirts, he banters, he touches, he corners James in dressing rooms and on catwalks and surreptitiously makes out with him, hot and fierce and needy, and he drives James crazy.

He touches James constantly outside the theatre, too, where he can get away with it: he’s performative at the stage door, he kisses James, and trails his fingers over the back of James’s neck, and winds his arms around James’s waist for no good reason; he jokes about the two of them moving in together after the show ends, as though it’s all just a general air of gay frivolity and not something that makes James’s heart constrict to actually think about — something they probably should actually talk about.

And James is discomfited by it, a little, but mostly he’s just  _insanely turned on_.

“For someone who doesn’t want us to talk about this, you spend an awful lot of time giving people the impression you really want to fuck me,” he growls against Andrew’s skin one night after Andrew has spent half their time at the stage door flirting with James and trying to draw obscene images on his arm in sharpie instead of signing Playbills.

“It’s 2018, baby,” Andrew snaps back, smug and sweetly insufferable. “That’s how we do it, now — we hide the truth in plain sight.”

Lee comes out — or gets outed, depending on your viewpoint — and it’s a whole thing, and everybody is tense for a day or two over it. And even though James swears he and Andrew have been so, so careful, he feels as though Lee, in his shaken state, is silently accusatory of them both.

And it’s not like James hasn’t borne the weight of all this night after night, on top of all the other weight of doing  _Angels in America_  in Trump’s city. But he’s told himself, so far, that it’s best if they stay secret, because god knows the last thing this show needs right now is another gay controversy over its actors.

He’s even, a weak part of him admits, relieved, because while half the general populace probably thinks Andrew is gay already, no one really knows who James is, and he’s not ready to have the fight where his agent stops giving him top-level auditions because producers don’t want to cast an out queer actor.

But if he can’t have that fight after spending two years playing Louis Ironson, then when can he?

They’re at one of an untold number of Tonys afterparties when everything finally breaks. Andrew is drunk, James is drunk, everyone is drunk, and it’s almost light out, and he’s pretty sure anyone left standing at this point is probably out of brain cells or fucks left to give; but he’s still surprised when Andrew asks the DJ to play “Moon River” and then pulls James into his arms and starts swaying with him right there where they stand.

“Hey,” James whispers, momentarily entranced by the sight of Andrew: his beloved, beautiful, over-earnest Tony-winning boyfriend; the best, most generous acting partner of his life, his, his best person. “I know it’s late, but we’re still in public, you sure you want to—”

“Yes,” says Andrew, sliding his arms around James’s neck and pressing a kiss against James’ cheek. “I always want to, with you.”

“People are watching,” James murmurs, even though he’s drunk and everything’s fuzzy and he’s not really sure how true that is.

“Don’t care,” Andrew says. “Kiss me.” He leans in and kisses James gently on the mouth, and James’s heart flip-flops several times and he pulls back enough to lean his head against Andrew’s forehead instead of letting the kiss deepen.

“I don’t want this,” he says, fumbling for words, “If this is just you being, being Prior right now.”

Andrew frowns at him, but doesn’t pull away.  _Moon River_  is a short song, but it suddenly still feels so much longer than the part they play in the show.

“What are you really trying to tell me?” Andrew asks him in a small voice.

James sighs and pulls Andrew closer and cards his hand through Andrew’s hair in spite of himself, because he’s drunk and it’s Tony night and, and fuck it.

“I’m trying to say that if this, right now, if this is just you being showy and affectionate for your co-star on Tony night,” he says, “Then don’t. I don’t want to do this.”

“Oh,” Andrew says, and his face clears. He cups James’ face in both his hands. “Well, no worries here,” he says. “Because I just want to make out with my incredibly hot, incredibly talented boyfriend, James McArdle, in front of the entire world, because he’s wonderful and I’m in love with him and he should have won a Tony.”

And he leans in and kisses James again, deep and open-mouthed and sweet.

James’s stomach flutters and he wraps Andrew in his arms and kisses back for all he’s worth, and Andy Williams is informing them that they’re two drifters, off to see the world, and he’s vaguely aware that a few people around them are cat-calling and applauding them, and everything is somehow exactly how it should be — exactly what this moment should be.

It’s an eternity later when they break apart, just enough for Andrew to kiss James on the nose, and then on the side of his mouth, and then his temple.

“Say that again,” James tells him, savoring the feeling of finally being able to settle his hand possessively at the small of Andrew’s waist — the classic boyfriend move he hadn’t realized he’d missed until now.

Andrew’s eyes are gleaming. “Say what again. That I love you? That I’m  _in_  love with you? That I’m completely fucking gone on you? And I’m really hoping you say yes when I ask you to move in with me when all this is over so we can own a bunch of cats and fight tyranny and never break up?”

For an instant James thinks he might actually be too drunk, and then he realizes the rush of dizziness he’s feeling is just sheer  _happiness_.

“Nah, the other thing,” he says, winking.

Andrew laughs and swats him on the arm. “You absolutely know you were robbed of a Tony, you wanker,” he says.

“Looks like I’ll just have to borrow yours, then,” James says, and if anybody is taking photos of them at the moment the social media feed later is going to include the word  _eyefucking_.

“Any time you want, chiquitita,” Andrew replies, kissing him, “until you get your own,” and then he folds himself around James and rests his head on James’s shoulder, and they dance to invisible music until the dawn finally summons them home.


	3. The one where it's Tony night!

Andrew tells himself quite firmly that Tony Night will be all about celebrating with his cast and his friends and his mum and dad, and it will absolutely not be about ogling James McArdle in his tuxedo.

It is, in fact, all of those things, right up until the moment Andrew steps onto the red carpet and sees James McArdle in his tuxedo.

“Oh, honey, there’s your friend!” his mom says excitedly, waving. James strolls over to them and slides his arms around Andrew, and when he kisses the side of Andrew’s mouth, perfunctory but sweet, Andrew suddenly feels a bit like he’s already tipsy.

“How’s my favorite Tony winner?” James says, tossing him a wink.

“Oh, stop,” Andrew says. James’s arms are still slung around Andrew’s waist, and Andrew can’t resist following suit. He curls his arm around James and a bunch of cameras flash.

“Whatever, you’re going to win,” James says. “He’s going to win,” he tells Andrew’s mom. He looks back at Andrew, and their eyes lock and hold for a moment.

“I’m happy to see you here,” he says, “with your family.”

“Oh, please, you see me every day,” Andrew says — and James’s eyes flash. He darts a glance swiftly over Andrew’s body.

“Not like this, I don’t,” he murmurs.

“Oh, look, there’s Denise!” His mum is waving again, and then she drags Andrew’s dad off into the fray without Andrew, leaving him alone for a moment — well, alone in the middle of a huge crowd, anyway — just smiling at James.

“You have your speech ready?” James asks, and Andrew feels a sense of relief sweep over him that he can just… stop pretending he hasn’t spent weeks angsting over what to say when he wins.

He shrugs. “I dunno. Apparently I need to say something about bloody cake-baking, because this is America in 2018.”

James winces and a flash of anger sweeps over his expression, and they’re still holding on to each other so Andrew just tugs him a little closer.

“This is why we’re here,” James says softly. “This is the Great Work.”

Andrew laughs. “We are such cultists,” he giggles.

“Two years on Kushner will do that to a person,” chuckles James. He reaches up and sweeps Andrew’s hair back from his forehead. “I know you don’t need me to tell you this, but you’re gorgeous and you’ll be great,” he says.

Andrew looks at him. “There are… things I wish,” he says meaningfully, knowing already that his point is going to be lost, because James is a consummate professional, so much more professional than Andrew, and over the past two years he has become an expert at selective hearing when Andrew tries to talk about the two of them. “I wish you were going to be up there instead of me, blowing everyone’s minds. I wish you were beside me, I wish… I wish I could get through this night with you next to me.”

James’s expression changes, and he looks at Andrew for a long moment before he speaks. “Andrew,” he says, and he leans in and gives Andrew another kiss — gentle, tender, open-mouthed and brief.

“I am always beside you,” he says, “holding your hand.”

__________

“Stop  _sulking_ ,” Nathan Lane is telling Andrew, in full-on exasperated fairy godmother mode. “You just won a  _Tony_ , for christ’s sake, you’re at the goddamn Carlyle, there’s Andrew Lloyd Webber playing house music in the corner, and you’re dressed like the ghost of Old Hollywood. But look at you! You look like someone took away all your toys, your face is all pouty, people are gonna think you’re Glenda Jackson.”

“I’m not  _sulking_ ,” says Andrew sulkily. “I’m having a great time. I just got a hug from Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Lesli Margherita and I have a date to play  _Overwatch_. I’m  _lovely_.”

Nathan gives him a sympathetic smile and leans across the table to pat his arm. “You know what this is, sweetheart,” he says. “You’re too drunk to think it’s anything else.”

“I just,” says Andrew gloomily. “Why  _Zachary Quinto_? How am I supposed to compete with  _Zachary Quinto_? He could eviscerate me with an  _eyebrow_. He’s probably seducing him right now with talk of how 1990s communist-bloc politics affected his read on Louis.”

“Isn’t Quinto dating Andrew Rannells or something,” says Nathan Lane with a handwave.

“I don’t know, but Rannells is here, too, I’m sure he’ll be happy to get in line,” Andrew says darkly.

“Kiddo,” says Nathan Lane, with all the air of aggrieved experience that Andrew supposes must be ingrained in any gay man in New York who’s over 50. “You’re here to dance and party and celebrate, and if you can’t do that because you’re holding on too tightly to what you don’t actually have, well, that should tell you something about what it is you really want.”

Andrew opens his mouth and starts to reply, and then shuts it again, feeling like a fool. He starts to say that he’s not  _trying_  to have a crisis, really, it’s just an unintended byproduct of spending hours watching every theatre legend in New York make a beeline for James fucking McArdle. It’s not like Andrew doesn’t get it,  _god_ , he gets it; but it’s one thing to know you’re secretly extremely thirsty for your co-star, and another thing to realize that apparently everyone else is thirsty for him, too.

He’s trying to process how absurd all that sounds even in his own brain when there’s a warm hand at his back and James slides into the seat next to him.

“Hey, you,” he says. “Quinto had to go, but he said to tell you congratulations, and to call him soon.”

“Oh, yes,” Andrew says, a little more dryly than he intends. “ _Zach_. He’s lovely, I’m sure he’ll be  _thrilled_  to hear from me.”

James shoots him an odd look and then exchanges a glance with Nathan before reaching for the drink that happens to be sitting in front of Andrew. He looks flushed and happy and triumphant, and so gorgeous in that goddamn tux.

“You look amazing,” Andrew tells him, and he’s told James this already, but that was hours ago and he needs to impress upon him that it’s still true. “You should have been in front of that podium tonight.”

James turns back to him. “You know I don’t care about that,” he says. And then he grins at Andrew. “You look amazing, too. You’re all windswept right now, it’s a bit Tony Curtis.”

“Favorite Tony Curtis movie, on three,” Andrew says automatically. “One, two, three —”

“ _Sweet Smell of Success,”_  they say in unison. James’s grin gets bigger. Nathan Lane snorts at them both from across the table. Andrew thinks,  _I definitely deserve you more than Zachary Quinto does_ and reaches out and takes James’s hand.

“Stay in New York when this is over,” Andrew says. “Come watch old movies with me at BAM and the Metrograph. Or just sit on the couch with me and help me validate my Filmstruck subscription.” He knows what he must look like right now, how he must sound, and James is startled; he gives Andrew’s hand a squeeze and starts to pull away gently. But Andrew holds onto him, laces their fingers together and tugs his hand closer.

“I’m not drunk,” Andrew informs him. “Or, maybe I’m just drunk enough to say what I mean. I dunno. It’s hard to think when you look like this.”

James’s mouth drops open a bit, so Andrew does the only thing he can do under the circumstances, which is lean in and kiss him.

James freezes for a moment in shock and then presses back, leans into him, cupping his face, so, so sweetly. When they pull away, James says softly, “You are drunk. Let’s get you home.”

“James,” Andrew tells him, and James stills obediently and looks at Andrew.

Andrew swallows.

“Don’t flirt with people who aren’t me,” he whispers. “Even if they are Zachary Quinto or Andrew Rannells or Mark Rylance or Glenda Jackson.”

James’s eyes widen.

“Don’t date people who aren’t me,” Andrew says, forcing the words out, “don’t hold hands with people who aren’t me, don’t, don’t fall in love with people who aren’t —”

“Don’t make me kiss you again,” James blurts, urgent but a bit strangled, “not here, not now, no.”

“No?” Andrew echoes plaintively, and James laughs, a bit hysterically.

“We have spent months and months not doing this,” he says, still laughing. “We are not doing it now, at 4 am, at a party thrown by our PR firm.”

“Oh, but if we leave the party,” Andrew says, wobbling to his feet. James stands and catches him around the waist.

“If we leave the party, we can talk about it,” he says in an undertone, breath warm against Andrew’s ear. Andrew shudders.

“I’d rather make out with you in the car,” he says, leaning back into James’s arms.

James makes a tiny choked noise and says, “Right. This is officially the world’s best and worst party. Nathan, congratulations.”

Nathan waves them both away. “Begone, you adorable closet cases,” he says.

“Have I mentioned I’m actually kind of gay?” Andrew informs him brightly.

“Oh, god, you  _are_  Glenda Jackson,” Nathan Lane replies, and Andrew beams at him, and James steers him out of the party and into the beautiful exhilarating waiting night, holding Andrew’s hand the entire time.


	4. The one where they're drunk in the city

Andrew is floating through Manhattan within one of those ubiquitous ephemeral entourages that waft through every Manhattan night — one of those nebulous crowds of people who drift seamlessly from club to club, bar to bar, from Williamsburg to Soho and back again, attaching and losing people as they move like a large amorphous amoeba perpetually spinning and losing and regenerating new limbs.

Only he is at the center of the amoeba, as he always is, and he hasn’t done this in a while, he’s older and busier and less into partying, but tonight is a surprise on multiple fronts. For starters, Andrew is drunk, quite drunk, at least enough to say sloshed, if “sloshed” were a word he could reasonably say right about now. For another, they’re in the Bowery, and Andrew has no idea how the hell he wound up in the fucking Bowery — like they’re in a speakeasy two blocks away from NYU, what, are they gonna head over to someone’s cool dorm room party til someone pulls the fire alarm?

For another, James is here. And maybe that explains why Andrew is in this cloud of people, because James is rarely out and about like this, and probably they both knew somebody else at the start of the evening, but that was hours ago and Andrew is hazy on the details, and all he really wants to do is stick close to James’s side and talk to him about movies and art and why Toad is always the superior Mario Kart avatar, and maybe cop a feel when no one is looking, all while James sends him his patented James looks over manly looking amber drinks — all those smoldering, wary eyefucks Andrew’s gotten so used to.

Just now, however, James has gone to fetch their drinks from the bartender, and Andrew has been babbling to two girls whose names sound suspiciously identical about — well, actually he doesn’t even know what about, but he mentioned Lars von Trier at one point and could actually feel their eyes glazing over.

When James comes back, Andrew turns gratefully towards him and says, “Tell me something about Lars von Trier,” and James responds promptly, “I once watched the opening sequence of  _Antichrist_  38 times in a row,” and Andrew slips his head on James’s shoulder and presses a kiss there. James just hands him his drink. 

“This is why you’re my favorite,” Andrew says, taking it and sipping gratefully. “You watched it 38 times and even though I bet now you feel guilty because of the inherent misogynistic subtext, you still acknowledge that the beauty of the film has value even in the face of all that’s problematic.”

“And you,” James says, laughing a little, “sound like somebody who’s trying very hard to justify working with Mel Gibson.”

“You are no longer my favorite,” Andrew says solemnly, and this time James laughs outright, so Andrew kisses him again, this time on the cheek.

“I don’t believe you,” James says, and Andrew loves it when he can make James smile with his whole eyes. “You’re a terrible actor.”

“You’re one to talk,” Andrew says. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

James sends him a shrewd smile and doesn’t ask what he means, and ugh, Andrew hates that about him, and also loves that about him, he’s one giant insufferable cocktease.

James is just sipping his malted or his amaretto or whatever that is. Andrew is having a grasshopper, and he takes a prim drink of it as if to prove to James that his bright green minty ice cream drink is by far the superior drink choice, and it will conquer all of James’s sober brown liqueurs. 

“I know you’re only here,” Andrew says, taking his arm, “because Denise ordered you to come out with me tonight because she thinks I don’t have any  _real_  friends and all these people are just sycophants and social climbers who’ll lead me astray.”

“You said ‘sycophants’ very nicely,” James responds, and, see, that’s the most Jamesian response ever. Andrew toasts him wryly.

“But they’re wonderful,” Andrew tells him. “They’re all wonderful. We are all fabulous creatures. And I bless us, everyone.”

“Right, Tiny Tim, that’s your last cocktail,” James says, laughing.

“Like hell it is,” Andrew says, gripping his glass possessively. ”God, these really are amazing, you should try one.”

“Can’t, love,” James says. “Too sweet. My agent would somehow know that I was off somewhere enjoying carbohydrates and start texting me angry emojis.”

“You’re not having any fun tonight,” Andrew says sadly.

“Not true at all,” James says, smiling at him.

Andrew smiles back.

“Let’s wander over to NYU and crash a dorm party,” he says.

“No,” James replies, laughing again.

“Let’s go to Times Square and re-enact  _Birdman_.”

“We’re in Times Square every day and that’s not actually how  _Birdman_  works.”

Andrew slips his hand into James’s. “Let’s go up to the fountain and make out.”

James goes still. He looks at Andrew searchingly for a moment, then looks down at their joined hands.

“You never ask me,” Andrew says. “You just assume it’s all one big joke.”

“I have an incredibly well-developed sense of self-preservation,” James says quickly. He swallows. “Or at least I used to.”

“You’re here with me,” Andrew opines. “You must like me a little.”

James smiles — seems to smile in spite of himself. “You aren’t convinced of that? After all this time?”

Andrew takes a long drink. Then he reaches over and takes an even longer drink of James’s scotch-whiskey-whatever. It burns, but he drinks deep.

“You and I,” he says. “We’d never have been friends naturally.”

James blinks at him.

“I’m too extroverted,” Andrew says, “and prone to wanting everyone to love me. And you’re too hot-tempered and antisocial. We’d have met once and I’d’ve said something ditzy about world peace, and you’d’ve responded with something veiled and snarky about Mel Gibson, and I’d’ve been—”

“Whoa, whoa, wait,” James says, “ _Now_  you suddenly want to talk about the Mel Gibson thing?”

“—And I’d’ve been mortified, and that would have been the last interaction we ever had,” Andrew says. He sniffs and shrugs off James’s upbraiding expression. “I’m not usually a maudlin drunk,” he says. “I blame the Bowery. It’s where you come to write beat novels and get depressed.”

“I don’t think that’s true at all,” James says, lips twitching in amusement, but he sets his drink down and looks at Andrew seriously. “You’re too drunk to talk about this.”

“You won’t talk about it when I’m sober,” Andrew tells him. “Tell me now, tell me everything, I can pretend not to remember it later.”

“ _Andrew_ ,” James says, and he leans up and kisses Andrew tantalizingly on the forehead. “You know people think we’re having some kind of an affair already. This isn’t going to help that, and I just don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

“No, Clueless Joe from Hannibal, Mo,” Andrew snaps. “People think we’re having an affair because we  _are_.”

James pulls back in shock.

“Neither of us are seeing anyone else,” Andrew says. “You broke up with that guy back in London the  _week_ after I kissed you that night in the dressing room—”

“—That was, that wasn’t,” James begins, and then he halts. Andrew laughs a little darkly.

“Oh, yes, it was,” he says. “This has all been real, baby.”

James stares at him for a moment and then drains his entire glass at once. Andrew looks on admiringly, enjoying the line of his throat.

“Stay right there,” he murmurs, “I really just want to…” he leans in and drags his nose over the intoxicating curve of James’s throat up to his jawline.

James says, “Jesus absolute christ,” very emphatically, and takes Andrew’s hand and drags him into a back corner where there are dark shadows and slightly fewer people around.

He pushes Andrew against the wall and leans in and glares at him, and Andrew is suddenly about ten times drunker and also sober and also wide awake and also very turned on.

“You told the entire country that you were very, very straight,” he says, eyes flashing.

“It’s called  _denial_ ,” Andrew says. 

“You make out with blokes all the time, you never acted like it meant anything before now!” James insists.

“None of them were  _you_!” Andrew retorts, and then he huffs in exasperation and kisses James, urgent and deep.

James makes a startled noise that quickly devolves into something guttural and aroused. He sinks against Andrew and wraps both arms around Andrew’s waist, and Andrew literally swoons like he’s a romance heroine and James is a kilt-wearing Scottish highlander with bulging muscles and exposed chest hair.

By the time they break apart, Andrew has one leg curled around James’s thigh and James has both hands on Andrew’s ass and has slowly pressed him totally against the wall, not quite grinding but a very narrow escape. His lips are swollen and bright pink, and Andrew  _did that to him._

“God, this is so much better than a dorm party,” Andrew murmurs.

“What the hell goes into a grasshopper,” James mutters, sliding his hand over Andrew’s back and pressing kisses along his neck.

“I think just some menthe, it’s barely alcoholic,” Andrew answers, grinning. “It’s just you, you make me feel drunk all the time.”

James kisses him again, and it’s a little frantic, like he’s still in disbelief. Andrew cups his face in his hands and holds him, kissing him until he can feel James relax against him, until his kisses spread out into unhurried explorations and soft whispered endearments against Andrew’s skin.

“It’s not true that we wouldn’t have gotten on outside the play,” James says at last. “I missed you so much during the break. I had no one randomly barging into my dressing room to ask me for my thoughts on the Crimean War, or make me spontaneously sing ‘Despacito’ just because it’s good for the soul.” He kisses Andrew’s nose. “Maybe I’d’ve driven you crazy, but you, you…”

“Tell me,” Andrew says.

James looks at him for a long moment, and he looks scared and vulnerable, and Andrew suddenly wonders which of them is actually the properly drunk one.

James leans in close and whispers, almost inaudibly, in Andrew’s ear:

_“You’re the thing my soul needs the most.”_

Andrew slowly pulls back and looks at him wordlessly. James gulps and gazes back, earnest and silently open. And Andrew feels abruptly sober, and older, and wiser, and wide awake.

He takes James’s hand.

“I should have told you every day,” he says, “how much this means to me, and how much I don’t want it to end.”

He kisses James, and then leans his forehead against James’s cheek. James lifts his hand to cup the back of Andrew’s neck and pull him closer, and then they’re wrapped up in each other, dancing to unseen music.

Somewhere in the background, a camera flashes. Andrew leans his head on James’s chest.

“I have to say, I’m liking the Bowery quite a lot right now,” James says, pressing a kiss into his hair.

“You say that now,” Andrew says, smirking. “But just wait. Everything closes by two.”

“Not a problem,” James says, his hand warm at the small of Andrew’s back. “We have somewhere to be.”


	5. The one where they reunite after the Broadway run ends

Afterwards, James goes back to Scotland, and Andrew goes to Central America.

James is fully prepared for that to be that, he’s completely braced to move on with his life, to be a professional and get a fucking grip.

Instead, Andrew texts him a selfie of himself holding a sloth.  _I’m holding a sloth_! the text reads.  _This is Daisy, we’re in love._

The sloth is wrapped completely around Andrew’s shoulders, clinging to him like a tree, and Andrew looks a bit frightened.

 _I’m very happy for you both_ , James texts back.  _I expect a wedding invite_.

 _I’m going to name you best man,_ Andrew replies.  _Just no shagging the bridal party._

 _No schtupping anyone but the groom,_  James responds.

_You’re going to fight Daisy for me? I don’t know if you’ll win, these toes are no joke._

_I’ve got a two-year head start on her,_  James replies.  _You’re all mine._  And he can’t stop smiling, even though this is all ridiculous and dangerous and he knows better,  _god_  he knows better.

Andrew sends him a sparkly heart emoji. James doesn’t reply, because James is practicing self-preservation.

But he does send Andrew a selfie with a cow a day later.

 _This is Pike_ , he says.  _We’re not in love, but we have been engaging in some highly immoral eyefucking._

 _Slag,_ Andrew replies.  _I bet you’re just eyefucking your way through the fauna of Scotland._

 _You left me for a sloth, I’m on the rebound,_ James replies with an upside-down face.

 _Poor baby,_ Andrew answers. _I’ll make it up to you._

_Tease. There you go, toying with my heart, just like always._

_No teasing here._

_So you say! I’ve been burned and now I’m on to you._

_So let me show you. When are you coming back to New York?_

_I’ve got some shitty banquet next month, I was on the fence about it but they wanted me to give some sort of speech._

_Oh, I got that invite, too. Brits on Broadway?_  with an eyeroll.

_This sort of thing must get exhausting for you. **  
**_

_Depends on the company._

_Is that a hint I should go? Keep you from being bored?_

_You always keep me from being bored._

_Andrew, a stuffed bunny and a set of wooden blocks could keep you from being bored._

_Then you’d better turn up, Mr. Fluffles,_  Andrew replies, with a joy-crying emoji tossed in.

And so, three weeks later, on a night hotter than any August night should be, James finds himself once again in the hellmouth of New York City, still inexplicably at his month-to-month lease above Times Square, still telling himself he’s not going to be staying in New York even though his agent is turning away pleas for auditions and screen tests and he’s suddenly overwhelmed with choice in a way he’s never been in London.

Maybe he’s just gotten really skilled at denial. He’s not staying in New York (he is), he’s not flirting shamelessly with Andrew (he is), he’s not getting closer and closer to losing his heart after guarding it fiercely for the last two years against the constant onslaught of Andrew’s mouth and hands and his puppy-dog eyes and his incessant casual intimacy. (He’s so fucked.)

It doesn’t help that Andrew has continually asked him if he’s coming to the banquet, even after James has assured him he is.  _What are you wearing?_ Andrew texts him, conveniently as James is staring dubiously at his wardrobe contemplating what to wear the following night.  _Are you wearing blue? You always wear blue._

 _Navy,_  James replies.  _Why, are you worried we might wind up wearing the same suit?_

_Maybe I just want us to match._

_His and hers dinner jackets, I like it._

_My bowtie, your pocket square._

_Your kinks are a bit on the nerdy side, has anyone ever told you_

_You, actually, quite frequently._

_Apparently I haven’t gotten my point across._

_Well, it’s always been hard to concentrate, I’m too busy ogling your pocket square._

And James doesn’t know what to do with that, just like he never knows what to do when Andrew toes the line of their flirtation right up against the edge of plausible deniability; so he does what he always does and retreats.

Or at least, he tries to retreat.

 _Should I leave the pocket square at home?_  He replies, cry-laughing.

 _Just bring you,_ Andrew replies, with a heart emoji.  _Can’t wait._

_You can’t possibly be missing me already._

_I am,_  Andrew replies, and the simplicity of it makes James’s heart ache a little.

He’s trying to figure out how on earth to reply when Andrew texts again:

_Are you bringing a date?_

James swallows.

It’s not like James is entirely oblivious. He’s always known how to dance this dance with Andrew, and he’s always thought that his commitment to it, to never letting things go too far or get awkward, is  _why_  Andrew has always felt so comfortable pretending like they’re something they’re not. He’s been in the theatre a good long while, after all; he’s seen countless straight boys play this game, and some of them have even played it with him.

But none of them have ever been his boyfriend onstage every night for two years straight; none of them have been…   _Andrew._   

Maybe it’s time to do it, call Andrew’s bluff once and for all.

 _Yes,_  he replies.

After a moment longer than necessary, Andrew replies:  _Oh._

James’ apartment has a grungy view of the water cooler of the building next door, a slice of Carnegie Hall next door, and a sliver of the Billionaire Building down the street. If he squints, he tells himself he can see the Winter Garden, though that’s almost certainly a lie; still, he can see the haze of light pollution that is Times Square, even from here, and he thinks he probably doesn’t appreciate it much, the smarmy glow of it that Andrew always unironically loves, no matter how many times he gets accosted by the Spider-Man cosplayer on 45th.

He thinks this is probably some sort of moment, standing here in his loaner apartment, in this city that still feels so alien even as he grows to love it more with every day — about to forever cross the line that should never have existed to begin with. He’ll cross it, Andrew will back down, and James will be free to move on and tuck his heart away without, hopefully, too much lasting damage.

James types out, and sends:  _You. I’m taking you as my date, if you’ll have me._

He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it’s not for his phone to actually  _ring_  a few seconds later.

James nearly drops his phone. “Andrew,” he says, startled.

“Hi,” Andrew says. “Are you serious?”

“Are  _you_  serious?” James asks.

“Oh, hell, yes,” says Andrew. “Do you want to pick me up before or just meet at the hotel?”

“No, I mean,” James starts, and then halts. Just ask, he orders himself.

“I want to meet you at the hotel,” Andrew says. “Get a glimpse of you in your tuxedo, meet your eyes across a crowded room.”

“So we’re really doing this,” James repeats, blankly.

“Text me a photo of your pocket square,” Andrew says, and hangs up.

 **  
**  
  
James is… honestly, James has no idea what to expect, but he dutifully texts Andrew his pocket square — patterned, burnt orange, with a touch of lavender. The next evening, a few hours before the banquet, Andrew texts him back a picture of a gorgeous textured bow tie, unmade and tossed casually on what must be Andrew’s bed, with James’s colors inverted — a deep indigo flecked with light orange. There’s no message with it, but somehow that makes it that much more significant. James stares at it for a long time, trying and failing to read whimsy into the gesture. **  
**

He can’t, though. He only sees promise; intent. It makes him shiver, makes him feel nervous and keyed-up and on edge — the kind of jittery anticipation normally reserved for an opening-night performance.

He should probably be thinking of this as a performance, instead of something real. That’s how he’s gotten through the entirety of his relationship with Andrew until now. There’s no indication tonight will be any different.

Except then Andrew steps into the Marriott wearing the most gorgeous grey suit James has ever seen, and he’s wearing the fucking bow tie, and his hair is just sort of artfully everywhere, and he looks around and sees James across the lobby, and James thinks,  _across a crowded room,_  and his lungs constricts, and he honestly doesn’t know how he’s going to do this if it’s not real.

Andrew beelines to James past a litany of people calling his name, and James hasn’t thought this moment through at all, which he suddenly realizes was a horrible mistake, because, like, does he go for the manly shoulder-hug, a brief waist-wrap, the casual cheek-kiss, or—

“Hey,” Andrew says, eyes bright and intent on James’s face, and he slings his arms around James’s neck just like he’s done countless times onstage. James puts his hands on Andrew’s waist without a second thought for anything, except to marvel at how endlessly unprepared he is for how tiny Andrew is, even after all this time.

“Hi,” he rasps, and the urge to pull Andrew closer is irresistible, so he does. Andrew cups the back of James’ head and leans in, close.

“You look incredible,” he says. He tilts his head forward, and James thinks for a lightning-flash that they’re about to kiss, but Andrew just hovers there, close and intimate, eyes locked on his face.

“I like the tie,” James replies, reaching up to run his hand over it — only that’s a mistake, because it’s too intimate, it’s too much, it’s—

Andrew settles against him, chest to chest, and says, “I missed you,” and then moves in to kiss James on the mouth.

James’ eyes flutter shut, and he kisses back, and there are cameras going off all around them, and he should be used to that, but there are also fireworks exploding behind his eyes, and his heart is hammering, and he pulls back to try and read Andrew’s expression, only to find Andrew looking at him with that hooded and inscrutable look he gets sometimes — eyes dark, not quite frowning, gentle but opaque.

“I definitely missed that,” James murmurs. Andrew’s eyes flash, and James is definitely not going to kiss him again, so instead he finds Andrew’s hand and lifts it to his lips — another mistake, because that turns out to be almost as intimate as if they  _had_ kissed again. He knows how they must look, how all this must look.

“Let’s talk inside,” he says, still in an undertone, because he’s under some kind of spell and doesn’t want to break it. He tugs Andrew up the escalator to the ballroom level, away from the public and toward the banquet; but Andrew laces their fingers together and leads him away from the party altogether, towards an alcove around the corner where currently no one is mingling.

Once there, he pushes James into the corner and runs his hand over James’ cheek, thumbing the curve of his jawline. He smiles a little as he drags his fingertips through James’s scruff, like he’s missed that, too.

“I don’t want to go in just yet,” he says, resuming his slow-dance position with his arms curled around James’s neck. “I want to hear how your vacation went.”

“I didn’t elope with any sloths,” James informs him, reaching up to thumb the back of Andrew’s neck, because he loved doing that during their dance and it always made Andrew shiver. He shivers now, and James grins, a little smug, but mostly besotted, aware he probably looks it.

“Daisy was very sad to see me go,” Andrew says. “Although I think she probably knew it was time.”

“Your fast-paced lifestyle was too much for her, was it?” James asks. Andrew giggles and beams at him.

“Plus, I had a guy back home,” he says.

“Oh, really.” James wonders if he could get away with trailing his fingers over Andrew’s collarbone, over the adorable dint in his chin that he’s fantasized about kissing so often. Later, he thinks, and is startled to realize there might actually  _be_  a later. “Must be a pretty lucky lad.”

“He is,” Andrew says, smirking. “He’s an extraordinary actor and he has something of a fetish for the color blue that I don’t quite understand, but which I have developed a deep appreciation for, nonetheless.”

“Oh, that,” James laughs. “Brings out his eyes, that’s all.”

Andrew swallows and looks a bit nervous for the first time since he walked in. “I may have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about those eyes over the past couple of weeks.”

“You should have said something,” James murmurs. “I’d’ve come back before now, if I’d known.”

Andrew blinks. “I was  _trying_  to say something,” he says, perhaps a bit guiltily. “I thought I was shameless.”

James laughs despite his reddening cheeks and leans up to kiss Andrew on the forehead.

“You’re  _always_  shameless,” he says. “I wasn’t sure if it was all just…” he takes a deep breath. “More of the performance.”

Andrew winces. “I know,” he whispers. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure how I felt until I was away from you, and then all I could think about was, was  _this_.” He cups James’ face in his hand and leans in to kiss him again, and this time it’s deep and sweet, without any of the confused urgency of the previous kiss, and James parts Andrew’s lips with his own and culls a soft moan from Andrew, precious and world-shattering and perfect.

“Are you sure?” he asks, burying the question against the side of Andrew’s throat. “I can’t go back to this all being some sort of game, Andrew, it’s too much.”

Andrew turns and takes James’s face in his hands and looks at him with one of those burning earnest expressions that always makes James feel like his heart is going to float out of his chest for wanting him, for wanting him just like this, earnest and needy and honest and raw.  

“It was never a game, with you,” Andrew says, eyes fixed on his. “It wasn’t, I just was so afraid I would turn out to be wrong, and I wanted to be sure before I—”

“I know,” James says, because he does, he knows from every single night, every wordless communication they’ve ever had over the last two years. “I know.”

He kisses Andrew again, gently, even though he knows, objectively, that Andrew isn’t fragile, not really, that inside he’s steely and determined and far savvier than he gets credit for being.  Still, James always has an ingrained urge to handle him with care, to keep him safe.

Andrew sways into him. “It took time to be sure,” he says. “And I took the time, and now I’m sure.”

And James’s heart does float out of his chest, finally, up and out and right into Andrew’s hands.

They make out for a few minutes, until Andrew’s hair is even more artfully disheveled, until his lips are deliciously swollen and James is starting to think perhaps they should just skip the banquet altogether and grab a discreet room upstairs.

“Aren’t you nominated for something at this thing?” Andrew murmurs against James’s lips. “You probably should be there for it.”

James makes a fully noncommittal noise and resumes kissing the underside of Andrew’s jaw.

Andrew laughs, soft and amused. “Take me inside and let’s scandalize everyone,” he says.

“Are we scandalous?” James asks.

Andrew grins. “That depends. Are we casual? Are we serious?”

James laughs. “No offense,” he says, “but I feel like we’ve spent the last two years in a very serious relationship, and I would really like to try the casual thing for a bit before we ramp back up.”

“We can do casual,” Andrew says, his grin getting larger. “But just so we’re clear, I’m still gonna make out with you when you win your award.”

“That’s good,” James says. “Casual should definitely involve makeouts.”

“And a lot of very intense feelings we mutually acknowledge but never talk about,” Andrew adds.

James pulls back, takes Andrew’s hands in his, and looks at him for a long moment.

“We’ll have time to talk about all of it,” he says at last. “Feelings, the future, everything. I’m not going anywhere.”

Andrew’s smile somehow gains more wattage than ever. _I did that,_  James thinks, and bites his lip to keep from grinning so hard he looks ridiculous.

“I’m not letting you go,” Andrew says, kissing James sweetly.

And then he tugs James, hand in hand, into the ballroom, and into his new, delightfully scandalous life.


	6. The one where it's Tony night (again)!

It takes a hilariously long time for James to begin to understand that this thing that they do isn’t Andrew’s ordinary thing that he does.

Like when Andrew comes to the stage door after the show and wraps his arms around James’ waist and bites his ear, and people at the stage door start asking them if they’re actually dating IRL, and James flushes and ignores the question but Andrew hums and winks at everyone at once, and James eyerolls and has to un-derail his thoughts.

Like when they’re at the Drama Desk Awards and Andrew uses up his entire time praising James, and then blows James a kiss that James automatically catches when he’s coming offstage, and then puts his hand in James’s and laces their fingers together when he sits back down, like that’s just the way they are.

Or like when Andrew starts ordering James’s drink for him at bars without asking because somewhere over the past two years he’s learned what James is having, and so it only makes sense to return the favor, and James finds himself fetching drinks for Andrew, to be met with a soft, “Thanks, babe,” and a quick kiss on the lips.

Or the time Andrew gets way too drunk at some party they’re at over in the Ace, and he just kind of wants James’s hands on him everywhere.

“You’re supposed to be an amazing dancer,” he says grumpily, trying to drag James onto the dance floor. “Why aren’t we dancing?”

“Well, I don’t just give it away,” James says, laughing and letting himself be tugged forward into the throng of bodies.

“You’ll give it to  _me_ , though,” Andrew tells him smoothly, confident as anything, and slinks against him like they do this all the time, and they don’t quite wind up making out on the dance floor, but it’s a very, very close thing.

Actors are constantly hooking up and fucking backstage, and James is no stranger to this lifestyle, but he is a bit thrown not long after that when people start giving him and Andrew space when they enter a room and find the two of them together, like they’ve interrupted something private.  

“Did we turn a corner I missed?” he asks Andrew one night, tucking a lock of his hair back behind Andrew’s ear. They’re in Andrew’s dressing room, casually wrapped around one another, because that’s how they are, and Andrew hums and then snakes his hand up James’s shirtfront.

“While you weren’t looking, we took over the whole damn block,” he says calmly, and then he sinks to his knees and opens James’s trousers.

So then they’re fucking on the regular, and that’s something James isn’t altogether prepared to analyze, even if he did think it meant anything (it doesn’t), and even if he thought Andrew was prepared to deal with what it might mean for his straight-for-now status (he isn’t).

But it’s also good, good and natural and addictive, and, and  _dizzying._ And that’s terrifying: James is the kind of guy who likes quick, simple, easy fucks, none of which this is; and it’s  _Andrew_ , and that’s even more terrifying; but it’s also Andrew’s body and hands and mouth and Andrew murmuring James’s name in that ethereal orgasmic voice; and Andrew’s perfectly Andrew-ish way of approaching sex. Like the way he will suddenly decide they should be having tantric sex or yogic sex without telling James first, or deciding to experiment with appendages that he then loses around James’s dressing room and has to spend a hilarious amount of time finding again because they tend to just fling stuff everywhere and deal with the fallout later.

And, and Andrew is Andrew, and James is leaving for Scotland after all of this is over, and nothing is set in stone, James knows that, and they’ve never talked about it, but then Andrew does some panel talk and refers to James as “my wonderful boyfriend, James McArdle,” and just completely glosses over the opportunity to clarify whether he means James and himself or Louis and Prior, despite the confusion of everyone around him.

And then Tony night, when Andrew jokes that he’ll marry Mark Rylance and then fuck all his other fellow nominees, and then slides his hand in James’s and says, “Unless someone brings me a better offer.”

“What, better than Mark Rylance?” James laughs. “You’re joking.”

“Well, I did say all my fellow nominees,” Andrew says. “Didn’t say which award.”

“You’ll have a long list of partners, then,” James says.

“And I’ll put you at the top,” Andrew says, staring shamelessly at James’s mouth.

Later, at the Carlye for the after party, he’s chatting with Joe and Zach about their favorite son of a bitch, and in the middle of kvetching about how difficult it is to stay in Louis’s headspace, he remarks, “And it’s so hard to sort out your own feelings from his, like, I don’t know how you and Stephen or you and Christian managed to extricate yourselves from what was happening onstage—” only to see them exchanging blank looks.

“Like, sexually, you mean?” Zach says. He laughs. “Christian and I never had that problem, I was already in a relationship, and we didn’t get wires crossed.”

“Stephen and I totally fell in love,” Joe says, “in a way, you know — like, we still talk all the time, we’re still incredibly close friends. But, no, we never confused our feelings for the character’s.”

“But you were playing them for so long,” James says, feeling like someone’s sucked all the air out of his lungs.

Joe looks at him and snorts. “I think you should probably go have a chat with your boyfriend,” he laughs.

James laughs, gobsmacked. “Apparently, I should.”

He doesn’t have to wait long, because Andrew finds them and beelines into James’s side. He curls his arm around James’s waist, and James follows suit automatically.

“Hey, lover,” Andrew says, kissing James’s cheek, and James unthinkingly presses a kiss against his forehead before his brain suddenly grinds to a halt.

Oblivious next to him, Andrew is asking, “Have the three of you had some kind of ceremonial wisdom exchange? Have you imparted unto my one and only all the secrets of prior Louises?” He giggles. “Prior Louises!”

“Oh, yes,” ZQ says sagely, casting a shrewd glance at James. “I think we’ve given him a full dose of our combined homosexual fairy dust.”

“Ooh,” says Andrew. He turns to James. “Sounds kinky,” he says. “I hope I get some of that glitter on me later.”

“You are a walking glitter stick,” says James. 

“Then you’d better take me home and crack me open,” says Andrew calmly.

There’s a beat where James just stands there, his hands on Andrew’s waist, adjusting to the surreal reality that they’re here, they’re doing this, and he looks like a possessive boyfriend because he  _is_  one.

He takes a breath, turns and nods, “Gentlemen,” to Quinto and Joe, and silently pivots Andrew away from them and out of the room.

“Oh!” Andrew says. “You’re taking me somewhere, where are we going?” He laughs. “Actually, you’re frogmarching me, how adorable.” He lets James half-tug, half-shove him along the corridor and away from the party into the men’s lounge, which is not an ideal place to have this conversation but is, at least for the moment, empty.

“Ooh, privacy,” Andrew says.

The moment the door shuts, he turns to James and says, “You look so amazing tonight, I just want—” and kisses him, full and deep. James slides his hands around Andrew’s waist and kisses back for an intoxicating, breathless moment until he forces himself to focus and pulls back.

“Andrew,” he says, cupping Andrew’s cheek. “People are going to come in here, they’re going to see us together, they’re going to make assumptions. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” says Andrew, “Now kiss me some more.”

“I am—” James laughs a little hysterically. “I am desperate to do that, but you’re a little drunk, babe.”

“Ugh,” says Andrew. “You’re so good at this, why do I have such amazing taste in sexual partners, I always get people who respect me when I want them to shag me.”

“Let me take you home and I’ll respect you all night,” James murmurs, pressing a kiss against his temple.

Andrew pulls back. “We’ve never done that, you’ve never stayed at my place.”

“You’ve never invited me.”

Andrew blinks at him. “I dunno how to do this,” he says blankly.

“What  _is_  this?” James asks him, honestly unsure.

“Be your boyfriend,” Andrew says, and James feels gut-punched for the second time that night.

“You’re leaving for Scotland,” Andrew says, pressing himself against James’s chest, “We’re not supposed to be doing this, I told everyone I was straight, and you should have won a Tony instead of me.”

“I don’t think those all connect up logically,” James says, pressing a kiss against Andrew’s wonderful, perfect mouth.

“James,” says Andrew, expelling James’s name in a plaintive little sigh. “You know I, we, this isn’t just—it’s not, right?”

James takes Andrew’s hands in his and stills him. “I know, sweetheart,” he says.

“Good,” Andrew says. “Because it’s really, really, really not.”

James smiles and kisses him. Beside them, the door opens and immediately whoever’s behind them sputters, “Oh! Oh, gosh, sorry, I—”

Andrew breaks away and beams, “No, no, come in, I’m just making out with my boyfriend.”

James turns apologetically to the person beside them — who is, of course, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

“Sir,” says James dumbly. “I mean—My Lord? Sorry. Er. Sorry. We were just, er, sorting some things out.”

Andrew grins and presses a kiss to James’s cheek. “We’re boyfriends,” he tells Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber in a conspiratorial voice. “You’re only the third person to know.”

Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber looks between them.

“No,” he says mildly, a gleeful smirk spreading across his features. “I’m pretty sure we all knew.”


	7. The one where they're in an established relationship

James comes home one day from walking Ren to find Andrew upside down on the couch, his feet curled over the back while he does a handstand, the top of his head disappearing a bit into the cushions.

“Did you evolve a new kind of yoga while I was out?” James asks. He unhooks Ren’s leash and Ren promptly runs over and licks Andrew’s upside-down face. Andrew squeaks and loses his balance, so James takes the opportunity to catch him, turn him right-side up, and kiss him.

“No, I was—” Andrew hums happily into the kiss and tucks his fingers into James’s shirtfront to tug him closer. “I was trying to see if an upside-down photograph still looked the same as it did right-side up if you were upside down when viewing it.”

“Of course you were,” says James.

“I just thought there might be subtle differences,” Andrew says.

“Did you reach a verdict or did we interrupt you?” James asks.

“Inconclusive, but I’ve since moved on to better things,” Andrew says, leaning up to bite his ear lobe. James gasps and cards his hands through Andrew’s gloriously thick hair, tugging him up to be kissed some more.

When they first started all of this, they were both hilariously tentative and fumbling, and he thinks how different they are now, how confidently and possessive and casually they touch now — in and out of public. James tends to go for hands, for touches at the waist, all the subtle things, but Andrew can’t help himself, he likes to kiss performatively and tuck his hands into all James’s pockets and nibble whatever part of James happens to be within reach and generally manhandle him into a perpetual state of half-arousal. James thinks it would probably be enraging if he weren’t so incessantly charmed by it, if he didn’t adore getting all of Andrew’s giddy attention turned on him whenever possible.

“God, I love doing this,” he says, settling against Andrew and leaning his weight fully on top of him.

“Kissing? Or couch-cuddling,” Andrew asks him, running his finger tantalizingly over the shell of James’s ear.

“The whole bloody gamut,” James replies. “Just, all of it. I can’t get enough. With you.”

Andrew moans happily into his mouth. “See that you don’t,” he says, flashing him a wink. “Since you’ve turned me gay and everything..”

“It’s not that I didn’t love being intimate before you,” James says. “It just made me nervous, I just always wanted to get to the sex, not a lot of cuddling before or after.”

“And then you spent two years having to settle for foreplay,” Andrew says, stroking the back of James’ neck.

“I spent two years learning to love foreplay.” James rests their foreheads together. “Louis wanted to hold on to every moment, every look, every touch, with Prior, so much that it all became sort of religious in my head. And I wanted to hold on to every touch from you.”

“When we were on break, after London closed,” Andrew asks, “Were you seeing anyone?”

“I went on a couple of dates,” James replies, “I had a bunch of one-night stands to take the edge off, that sort of thing. But mostly I was just trying to prepare for Broadway. Being Louis on Broadway.”

He laughs, a little sheepish. “I didn’t want anything with any of them. Not even hand-holding. There was one bloke who kept trying to reach across the table at dinner to take my hand and I, I honestly felt a little sick over it. Like I was cheating on you.”

“James,” says Andrew, sounding a little wrecked.

“You were just so, so, embedded in me,” James says, because he can’t help himself. “Every night, every single night, I would leave the theatre and just…  _long_  for you, want you beside me, want to be able to touch you like this and know that you were with me, where you belonged.”

“You could’ve,” Andrew whispers. ”I would have done anything, I was stretched so thin trying not to fall in love with you and failing so miserably, I—”

“You wouldn’t,” James says. “You wouldn’t have put this ahead of the play, I know you wouldn’t’ve.”

“And you wouldn’t have asked me to,” Andrew smiles up at him. Then his smile turns a little rueful. “So I fucked everyone else backstage except you.”

“I  _noticed_ ,” James replies. “I mean, me, too.”

“God, so many times I thought you and Denise would stop fucking around and get serious —” Andrew breaks off and bites his lip.

“I thought so many times you and Nate would — I was sure you were—” James halts.

“ _No_ ,” says Andrew urgently. And then he adds, flustered, “I mean, yes, maybe, a little, but we — I wasn’t there, emotionally, he knew that, he wasn’t going there, we weren’t — I wasn’t anywhere except being miserable, wanting you, and not knowing how to want you.”

“Andrew,” James says softly, leaning in for a kiss.

“Thank you, a lot, for not being straight,” Andrew murmurs against his lips, “because I really really like that you’re flexible on that front.”

“I really, really like that  _you’re_  flexible,” James chuckles.

“I’m  _very_  flexible,” Andrew grins. James bites his chin, and Andrew says, “Fuck,” with feeling, and hitches his legs around James’ waist like James is a set of monkey bars. He thrusts up and against James’ hard-on, and James scrambles to undo their flies and free their cocks.

“I still cannot believe,” he says, lifting Andrew’s shirt and pressing a kiss against his sternum, “that you weren’t sure you were queer when you’re so fucking  _insatiable_  for this.” He reaches down and gives Andrew’s erection — long, firm, bloody perfect — a stroke to make his point. Andrew shivers and just slowly smiles a Cheshire cat grin, smug and beautiful.

“Wasn’t insatiable till I met you,” he purrs.

“ _Christ_ ,” James says, and they’re kissing, urgent and needy. Andrew gasps and arches against him, and James seizes the opportunity to kiss his way over the long exposed column of Andrew’s throat. Andrew cards his fingers through James’ hair.

“You’re embedded in me, too,” he murmurs, fingers teasing the back of James’ neck. “I know you so well.” He runs his hands over James’ back, down to the curve of his ass. “I know how to make you shiver and gasp and do that thing where you half-moan, half-laugh,” and he slips his fingers along the crevice of James’ cheek as he says it and James does exactly that. He nips Andrew’s collarbone in retaliation.

“It’s because I spoil you,” he teases, tugging Andrew’s shirt off and then his own at last. “I give you too much to work with.” Andrew drags his fingernails over James’s chest and then leans up to press a kiss against James’s shoulder.

“Don’t give it to anybody else,” he says, his eyes going dark, and James’s heart constricts in his chest for wanting him, for how fucking  _beautiful_  he is, for how completely open and expressive he is, and how often those expressions are just about love.

He kisses Andrew and gets his hand back on Andrew’s cock, pulling a little roughly while Andrew squirms and frots against him, deliciously needy and noisy and perfect.

Outside the city is squawking faintly below, and Ren is probably going to interrupt them any moment with a chew toy he’s slobbered all over, and James always vows never to do this on the couch because the angle is always awkward and annoying, but Andrew is gasping James’s name in the breathless tone only James ever gets to hear him use, and later tonight they’re going to go to the park and visit the fountain and Andrew’s going to lace his hand in James’ and pull James’s arms around his waist like a proper boyfriend, and he’ll look at James like they’re in the middle of the best moment of their lives, because to Andrew every moment really is the best moment, and James gets to be there for all of it, and, and god, James loves him, loves his eyes, his voice, his taste, loves his eager showiness, his brilliant hyperactive brain, loves him, loves him, loves him, and he presses his forehead to Andrew’s as Andrew comes, and lets himself whisper against Andrew’s skin all the promises he’s spent the last two years trying not to make.


	8. a tiny interlude

k but like:

James perpetually being unprepared for Andrew complimenting his acting abilities, and Andrew just always casually intro-ing him to people like, “Hi, this is my boyfriend, he’s the greatest actor alive,” and James always reacting by blushing and flailing and being embarrassed, which of course always delights Andrew, who has probably memorized reviews of his performances, so he can just be like, shrug, “I’m serious, the Independent called him the next Mark Rylance,” and then kiss the corner of James’s mouth when James can’t stop grinning, until James recovers enough to retort fondly, “You’re just being gracious because you beat me out for a Tony,” and Andrew can wink and reply wickedly, “Well, you made out with me onstage every night for a year, all that talent must have rubbed off,” and by this point whoever they’re talking to has probably just given up and moved on and left them just standing basking in the glow of being flirty and happy and truly, finally, so firmly together, so really the only thing left to do is for James to murmur, “That’s okay, I’ll just have to beat you to an Oscar,” and cut Andrew’s burble of laughter short with a kiss that leaves them both a little fizzy and giddy, foreheads touching, breaths mingling, a little lost and overwhelmed and in love.


	9. another tiny interlude (i'm sorry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which the origins of this fic title are established

WHAT IF THE ANGELS IN AMERICA CAST HAD AN ABBA DANCE PARTY

AND EVERYBODY IS JUST HANGING OUT DANCING AND ANDREW IS JUST BOPPING MERRILY AROUND AND HE AND JAMES AND NATE DO A SPONTANEOUS CHORUS LINE TO “WATERLOO” AND IT’S THE BEST AND EVERYTHING’S PERFECT AND THEN LATER RANDOMLY HE AND JAMES ARE RANDOMLY DANCING TOGETHER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NEXT SONG AND THEY START OUT DOING IT IN THIS VERY FUN JOKEY WAY LIKE THEY’RE JUST IN SYNCH AND DOING A DANCE LINE TOGETHER AND THEN SUDDENLY THE VERSE KICKS IN AND THEIR EYES MEET AROUND THE TIME ABBA IS LIKE “I’VE GOT SO MUCH THAT I WANT TO DO WHEN I DREAM I’M ALONE WITH YOU” AND THEY CAN’T LOOK AWAY FROM EACH OTHER AND JAMES JUST PULLS ANDREW INTO HIS ARMS AND THEY START DANCING FOR REAL AND EVERYTHING’S SUDDENLY SULTRY AND HEATED AND ANDREW MOUTHS, “COME ON, GIMME A BREAK, WILL YA,” AND JUST NAILS HIM WITH THIS INTENSE LOOK, AND JAMES JUST GIVES IN AND THAT’S HOW THEY WIND UP MAKING OUT FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CHORUS OF “TAKE A CHANCE ON ME”

BYE


	10. The one where it's Tony night (again again)!

“Hey,” he tells James around 4:30, when James is starting to yawn but the intoxicated sparkle has yet to leave his eyes. “Come with me.”

He pulls James to his feet and tugs him off to peer into the many side rooms that have been teeming with people all night until they find one that’s deserted. “There’s another after party,” he tells James after they’ve entered and shut the door.

“I thought  _this_  was the after party,” James says.

Andrew grins. “There’s always another after party. This one’s at Rudin’s.”

“At his  _house_?”

“Penthouse suite.”

James whistles. Andrew grins. “Come.”

“Oh, god, I can’t, it’s  _so_ late,” James says, laughing. Andrew steps into his space, and he registers the moment James blinks himself into a degree of soberness.

“Come,” Andrew says, looping his arms around James’s neck. “There’ll be fewer people around, it’ll be quieter. We can dance. And talk. I never get to talk to you anymore.”

“Well, not much of a loss there,” James deflects. Andrew puts a finger to his lips.

“You’re not listening,” he says. “I miss you. I miss everything. And it’s going to be over so soon.”

James’ eyes widen and he goes completely still.

“I won a Tony tonight,” Andrew says, though he’s not sure how that connects to anything. “It should have been yours.”

James starts to reply, but then retreats, still silent, still listening.

“Every time I look at you I feel like I can’t get near you anymore, not the way it was back in London,” Andrew says. “You’re so wary of everything here. You second-guess everything so much. I just want to take you and put you somewhere safe, where you won’t get ruined.”

James laughs, then, a little disbelieving. “You’re the one who needs protecting, love. This play’s been so hard on you.”

“Do you mind that?” Andrew asks, pressing against him. “Do you mind that I’m half in love with you?”

James flinches, and swallows, and then cups Andrew’s cheek in his broad palm.

“How can you even think for a second that I’d, that I’d  _mind_?” he whispers.

“Has it ever been mutual?” Andrew whispers back. “Even for half an instant?”

James stares at him for a moment. Andrew holds his gaze.

James takes a breath. “As much as any relationship like this one can be, between two people who are… probably both straight… Andrew, it’s completely mutual.”

“Oh,” Andrew says. James breaks eye contact and flushes bright red. “Can I,” he starts.

“Yes,” James replies instantly, and Andrew leans up and kisses him, deep and slow, until James sighs and parts his mouth against Andrew and kisses back. He feels James’s hands at his sides, sliding possessively over his back, and it’s not a new feeling, it’s the most familiar feeling of all, kissing James, but when James gasps and tightens his hands reflexively around Andrew’s waist, there’s a thunderclap inside Andrew’s brain.

He leans into the kiss, pliant and eager, and for a brief moment James pulls him closer, and it’s  _everything_  — but then James pulls back, mussed and apparently shell-shocked. He starts to speak, reaches for words, fails, and tries again.

It takes a moment longer for the implications to sink into Andrew’s brain: he’s being rejected. That’s what this is. That… doesn’t happen to him a lot.

“There are, are, about a hundred reasons,” James starts, and Andrew puts a finger to his lips.

“Shh,” he says. “I know. This never happened. Trick of the light.” He lets his fingers trail over the curve of James’s lips, trying not to think about how it will feel in another month when he’ll start to forget all this, to forget how plush James’s lips always are beneath his stubble, to forget the feel of James’s mouth against his.

“You think you can just, just bottle it back up,” James says, sounding hoarse. “You, of all people.”

Andrew smirks. He’s very good at smirking and he sends James his wryest, smirkiest expression. “What happens on Tony night,” he says.

James backs up, still looking stunned, and Andrew, with what he thinks is a surprising degree of willpower, wrenches himself away.

“I’m going to Rudin’s,” he says. “I’ll see you back at the theatre.”

“Andrew,” James says. He sounds plaintive and confused and fond, and it twists Andrew’s heart and simultaneously reminds him a little of Louis. He smiles and shakes his head.

“I’ll see you at the Neil Simon, James McArdle,” he says, and whisks himself away.

At the theatre the following week, everything is exactly the same, except that Andrew can feel a sort of, oh, loosening between the two of them. He has this whimsical idea that James looks at him longer, holds his gaze more deeply, than he normally does. Once or twice it makes him falter onstage when Louis is trying to return to Prior, because want flares up within him, raw and fierce, and he can tell by the answering look on James’s face that neither of them knows who it’s for.

A week later, at a little past midnight, James texts him.

_That thing that didn’t happen. I can’t stop thinking about it._

Andrew is still staring, stunned, when James adds:  _It’s all I can think about._

 _Come here right now_ , Andrew responds, heart pounding.

 _BAD idea_ , James replies, and Andrew stabs the phone call button so hard he almost breaks a nail.

“James McArdle, you fucking cocktease,” he announces when James answers seconds later.

“I’m  _straight_ ,” James says, laughing shrilly. “ _You’re_  straight, we’ve done this  _entire_  show until now without any confusion, I don’t—”

“Sexuality is  _fluid_  and I  _miss you_ ,” Andrew says.”I want to bite the cleft in your chin, I want to cuddle against your bare chest, I want you to do that thing you do onstage sometimes where you run your foot over my calf and it’s ticklish but it feels amazing because it’s you, so can you just please get over here.”

“Oh, my god,” James says, and Andrew can hear him flop back against the pillows of whatever he’s sitting on, bed or couch. Andrew’s never been to James’s apartment in the city, but if it’s anything like his dressing room it’s soft and homy and rustic and warm, just like James himself.

“Nevermind, stay put,” he says. “I’ll come over there, less hassle.”

“But,” James says.

“No buts,” Andrew says. “Are you going to say no to your  _boyfriend_?”

James laughs. “You know I can’t,” he says, sounding a little overwhelmed.

“I’ll be there in ten, baby,” Andrew says, and he is.


	11. the one in which there is almost phone sex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is something of an outtake for the very first McArfield fic I wrote. It takes place during the interim months between the National Theatre production and the Broadway production.

And after simmering in this anxiety for a day or two he calls James, who answers the phone with, “Hey, there, sweetheart,” and Andrew drops into the nearest chair immediately because his knees have just given out. **  
**

“Hey, sexy, how you doing,” Andrew says, aghast at himself and unable to remember the last time he felt this way — even with Emma there was never this, this thing where James talks and Andrew suddenly feels like his motor functions have all stalled.

“I’m doing great, now,” James says, sounding pleased. “Hang on, I’m at my uncle’s birthday party and it’s a ruckus in here, l need to find a better spot for this.”

“Do  _not_  leave your uncle’s birthday party, I’m hanging up,” Andrew says.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” says James, and  _god_ , why can’t Andrew stop  _smiling_ , what is happening, this is — this is — he forces himself to drag air into his lungs and does it again and again until at last James says, “You hear that?”

“What am I listening to?”

“Crickets,” says James. ”I’m literally outside sitting on some sort of barrel next to a sheep pasture like I’m in a bloody Thomas Hardy novel. There’s a sheep staring at me like ‘who the fuck are you?’”

“I’m in New York,” says Andrew. “My dog’s here, but I think he’s mostly used to me now.”

“I doubt that,” says James. “He’s barely seen you lately, probably forgotten all about you.”

“I don’t think that’s how dogs work.”

“You say that now, but one day Ren’ll be locking you out of the house. Cops show up, he’ll be like, ‘Officer, I don’t even know him, he just showed up here.’”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t do the play for the sake of my relationship with my dog?”

“I’m saying I bet he missed you,” James says, suddenly warm and serious.

“Have you missed me?” Andrew’s voice sinks on its own, and he suddenly realizes he is no longer in control of his emotions or anything about this conversation.

“Always,” says James. “You?”

“Oh, yes, I’m weeping into my tea on the daily.”

“That’s the Andrew I love,” says James, and Andrew’s  _heart_  stops, holy  _shit_ , this is just, honestly,  _what_.

“I do miss you,” he says, vamping. “I miss, I miss everyone. And, and Prior misses Louis.”

“Of course he does,” James says automatically, and, ugh, Andrew loves this about James — that Andrew can be the world’s biggest grandiose drama queen and drop all kinds of leading statements or ridiculous nonsensical bullshit on him, and James never ever fucking bites, he just rolls with it. He always gives Andrew his ‘yes, and,’ without expecting him to explain or talk out what’s in his brain, and it’s wonderful,  _he’s wonderful_.

In Louis’ voice, James says, “Tell Prior I love him, and I’m coming back to him whether he likes it or not.”

Andrew breaks into laughter. “Louis?” he answers as Prior. “What the hell are you doing in Scotland, I didn’t think Jewish New Yorkers ever migrated further than Florida!”

“I just, I just got a little carried away is all,” says Louis, “I went to visit the graves of all the previous Prior Walters to ask for their help in winning you back.”

“And that’s why we can’t be together,” Prior replies. “You want to give me a grand gesture? Come back and help me pay my health insurance!”

James cackles, and for a moment they just laugh together. “It’s tough,” he says after a moment in his own voice, his own beautiful voice, rough and smooth all at once, like polished granite. “Knowing we have to take this giant break and then start it all up again.”

“I don’t want the break,” Andrew says, “I want it to be happening, I want it to be over. I mean — I don’t want it to be over. I don’t ever want it to be over.”

“But it’s the next ten fucking months,” says James.

“Ten  _fucking_  months,” Andrew says, curling up into the chair and wrapping his arms around himself to stave off the cold gnawing in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about it. “I don’t even know who the fuck I’ll be in ten months. When this play is done with me and finally spits me back out into the world.”

“That’s the whole point of doing it, though, isn’t it?” James says. “To let it change you. To do the work and let the work make you into someone new, someone better.”

“Yeah, but I— I don’t know if I want to change  _that_  much,” says Andrew.

“You mean you don’t want to turn into Prior,” says James, and as he speaks, Andrew realizes he’s actually getting a little hard at the sound of James’s voice. “You don’t want your feelings and his to be inextricable?”

Andrew grips himself and tries to figure out whether he wants James to stop talking or wants James to keep talking.

“No, I think I’d be, uh, happy to become Prior,” he babbles, “as long as I didn’t think I’d wake up one day and suddenly be myself again.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” James says. “Whatever awakenings you have, sexual or otherwise, they’re yours, they’re not grafted onto you.”

“Who said anything about sex?” Andrew yelps, crossing his legs.

“Oh, are we not talking about sexuality?” James asks wryly. “You said you didn’t want to become Prior, I didn’t think you were talking about suddenly hearing voices or being diagnosed with terminal illness.”

“Oh,” says Andrew. “Um.” He takes a breath. “I don’t care if I have a sexual awakening from all this,” Andrew says. “I care that I have to wait another ten fucking months to know if it’s real or if it’s just… method acting.”

There’s a long pause, and then James says softly, “Oh.”

“Do you,” says Andrew. “Um. No, wait, that’s, that’s not why I called, I did not call to talk about my non-sexual non-awakening.”

“Well, that’s a shame,” James answers. “You said you’d tell me if I ever had a shot at being Spider-Man’s girlfriend.”

Andrew laughs, a little shrilly. Thank  _god_  James is like this, thank god he never pins Andrew down on any of the drivel that comes out of his mouth, but also this is doing nothing to help Andrew’s erection. “You know I’d just kiss you upside-down if you asked, right?” he manages.

“Nah,” James replies. “Wouldn’t be the same. I’d want the full deal. The drama, the sparks, you in Spandex.”

“I think you’re making a really different Spider-Man movie in your head,” Andrew says, but his breath catches as he says it, and suddenly the air is charged with a tension he hadn’t known it was possible to feel, over the phone, thousands of miles between them.

“I like my movie better, then,” James says, and his voice drops like a stone. “Just me, and you, and me finally having you right where I want you.”

The silence stretches on and on between them and Andrew thinks: Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh,  _fuck_ , and finally manages to whisper:

“When are you coming to New York?”

James exhales, heavy and slow, like he’s having to remember how. “Not til December. Putting it off.”

“Oh,” says Andrew. “That’s, that’s fine. Of course it’s fine.”

“It is fine,” says James. “It has to be fine, because this play is the work. It’s the work of my life, it’s the work of all our lives, and, and it has to be.” He takes a breath and says shakily, “So I’m not going to tell you what I’d do to you, I’m not going to talk about how I’d kiss your mouth and your throat and your cock or how I’d touch you for hours or how I’d beg you to hold me down and fuck me—”

“ _James_ ,” Andrew breaks in, rasping because his throat has just gone impossibly dry. His hand has started moving over his erection of its own volition, and he knows James can hear the hitch in his breathing.

“Or, or how I’d get you hard and then ride you until you filled me up, and then turn you over and ream you out, how I’d put my tongue inside you until you were incoherent and then put my cock in you and fuck you hard and deep, the way you always beg me to fuck you, the way you beg me with your eyes and your voice and your mouth, every fucking night when I kiss you, Andrew—”

The top of Andrew’s head flies off and he comes with a jolt and a shudder and James’ name on his lips.

He sits covered in sweat and shock, panting, while James breathes with him and eventually says gently, “I’m not going to do any of that because ten months is a long fucking time.”

Andrew laughs, giddy and wrecked and hoarse. “So you’re just going to leave me here with my gay crisis?” he manages. “You make me come and you aren’t even going to let me return the favor?”

“ _Fuck_ ,” says James, and Andrew wants to ask him if he’s hard, if Andrew makes him hard, if this is  _really happening_  to them both or if it’s all just a complete and utterly unprofessional disaster. “I want to say yes, but for starters this sheep is still right here—”

“Oh, my god, shut up.” Andrew bursts into laughter. “Fuck you.”

“I’m sorry,” James says. “I’m so fucking gone on you, and, and I can’t be, because it’s too much, and I know you’ve been down that road, I know you know how the lines get crossed, and you’ve been so fucking careful up til now and I just went and fucked it up—”

“No, you didn’t,” Andrew says, “because I was losing my mind without hearing from you, I needed—I needed your voice.” He feels like he’s being strangled. “This already feels like — I feel bereft, I want you here.” He laughs, and it sounds hollow. “I want my fucking boyfriend.”

“I’m in love with you,” James says.

“I know,” Andrew says, because he’s known for months; how could he not?

“I’ve gone and fallen in love with my fucking  _straight_  co-star with  _ten fucking months_  left before the end of the biggest fucking performance of my career,” says James again, with emphasis. “Who, by the way, is a world-famous celebrity, which hilariously isn’t even on the radar of surreal things about this situation.”

Andrew bites down hard on his knuckle because he’s either about to burst into laughter or sobs, he’s not sure which. “If it helps any I think the straight thing is really, really up for debate.”

“You’ve made out with like eight of your other male co-stars!” James says, sounding a little hysterical. “None of them ever turned you gay!”

“Well, I didn’t have to act in a seven-and-a-half-hour nightly ritual of epic love and heartbreak with any of them, did I?”

“ _Ten fucking months_.” James swears under his breath, and there’s a bleat from somewhere in the background.

“ _Jesus christ_ ,” says Andrew, bursting into laughter, “ _you fucking had phone sex with me in the middle of a sheep pasture_.”

“I would have phone sex with you if you called me from the middle of a fucking Trump rally,” James says. “I love you.”

“This is such bullshit,” says Andrew, still laughing. “I’m going to throw my fucking phone off the balcony.”

“I’m hanging up on you now,” says James. “And when I see you in New York it’ll be like this never happened. You can just chalk this up as a total fluke.”

“You want me to tell my dick this was a total fluke?” Andrew asks.

“Look, you asshole,” says James, “If your dick is still interested after goddamn  _July_ , I’ll apologize to it personally.”

“I’m going to sext you,” Andrew threatens. “I’m going to sext you all the time, you’re going to feel like you’re in the world’s worst game of gay chicken.”

“That is sexual harassment, you motherfucker,” says James, cracking up.

“I’m so sorry,” says Andrew, swiping at his face. His laughter is starting to turn into hiccups. “I’m so sorry. I love you and I miss you terribly.”

“This is going to be fine,” says James. “I promise you, no matter what, you’ll be fine, and Prior and Louis will be fine.”

“I need  _you_  to be fine,” Andrew says. “I don’t want to hurt you, I never ever want to hurt you.”

James breathes in and out, and Andrew doesn’t know why just the sound of him breathing is so reassuring, but it is.

“James,” Andrew says. “We just kind of had sex.”

“Yeah,” says James. There’s silence between them for a moment. “We’ve sacrificed so much of ourselves for this play,” he says. “We can sacrifice a little more. In ten months this might look like a totally hilarious weird moment in time. Or, or we’ll see.”

Andrew sighs. “Then I guess I’ll see you in December,” he says.

“I’ll be counting,” James says. “All the days.”


	12. The one where it's Tony night (again again again)! and Mark Rylance is this ship's unseen fairy godmother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt based off [Andrew Garfield's actual answer to "fuck/marry/kill"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G74K8VcXacY) at the Tony Awards.

Okay, look, it’s not like James thinks he has some kind of monopoly on Andrew Garfield just because he’s spent the better part of two years basically being his boyfriend, and getting to know his intimate quirks and habits, and the way he always gasps whenever James touches his collarbone or flicks his tongue over Andrew’s lower lip.

And it’s not as if James has been secretly cataloguing a list of ways he absolutely does not want to touch Andrew, because that would be absurd, because James is Good Enough To Not Be Method and he’s not going to confuse his character’s feelings with his own feelings.

And anyway, even if he has, that would be absurd, because Andrew is  _Andrew Garfield_ , and after this is all over he’s going to go back to being a superstar and James is going to go back to… Glasgow, probably.

So it’s completely ridiculous that James’s first reaction to hearing Andrew’s dumb answer to getting asked which of his nominees he’d fuck/marry/kill is a ludicrous amount of jealousy.

Especially since they all know how Andrew feels about Mark Rylance.

“Oh! Mark Rylance!” he’d exclaimed randomly at James within two weeks of meeting him. James doesn’t even remember why, just that it had led to a 20-minute recap of Mark Rylance’s  _Twelfth Night_. 

“Do you think Mark Rylance will come see the show?” Andrew asked him more than once before they opened in London, as if James has a personal insider view of Mark Rylance’s schedule. “He’ll have to come see the show, right?”

“Have you seen  _Farinelli and the King_?” Andrew asked him on their first day of New York rehearsals. “We should go see it together!”  They did not, but Andrew managed to see it twice, and he seemed a little deflated whenever James, focused on not freaking out over his own performance, managed to miss it. “But, but, it’s  _Mark Rylance_ ,” Andrew blurted at one point, because Andrew is just… like that. And James doesn’t know when he started finding Andrew’s obsessive quirks and puppy-dog need to be liked endearing instead of annoying, but that horse is long out of the barn; and so when Tony night finally arrives, James is going to focus on enjoying Andrew enjoying himself, and not give himself a pointless neurotic breakdown wondering if Andrew will finally get to ingratiate his way into Mark Rylance’s lap.

Or at least, that’s what he thinks, until Andrew declares on camera that in a game of fuck/marry/kill, he would fuck all his fellow nominees and marry Mark Rylance.

For some reason, this response draws  _laughter_  from everyone around them, people who clearly aren’t aware that Andrew is 100% serious.

“Should I be worried that you’re apparently planning your wedding without the groom’s consent,” James tells him when he returns to his seat next to James. Andrew smirks at him.

“Or just that you’re planning on flagrantly cheating on him with all those other men,” James continues. “Jamie Parker, really.”

“You’re lying if you say you’d pass up the chance to have sex with Harry Potter,” Andrew says, elbowing him. “You’re from the land of Hogwarts, please, you’d be first on your knees.”

“I don’t actually believe in magic,” James laughs. “I don’t actually think he’d do magical things to my cock.”

“Well, Mark Rylance does magical things to my cock,” Andrew says. “That is why we are to be married.”

“Is that your main criteria for a successful marriage, then?” James says.

Andrew shrugs. “I think that’d be an effective predictor.”

“But you’re assuming that only one person at a time can do magical things to your cock,” James says, in what he thinks is quite a reasonable tone. Andrew casts a coy, sidelong glance at him from beneath his eyelashes, in that way he has of randomly and stealthily eyefucking everyone, and James is on to him, James has always been on to him, so it’s absurd that his stomach flutters a little anyway.

“Who else?” Andrew asks.

“Sorry?” 

“Who else,” Andrew says shrewdly, “is doing magical things to my cock in this hypothetical scenario?”

James swallows.

Andrew turns and looks at him calmly, eyes dark, and James realizes he has fooled no one here but himself.

Andrew bends towards James and says, voice dropping, “Ask me which of my co-stars I’d fuck-marry-kill.”

“Fuck,” James manages. His mouth has suddenly gone dry.

“James McArdle,” Andrew says.

“Marry?” James asks, trying not to grin.

“James McArdle,” says Andrew, his gorgeous little mouth slowly spreading into a smile.

“Kill,” James says.

“James McArdle, for being an absolute fool,” Andrew says fondly, and he leans in and kisses James, and doesn’t even stop when Mark Rylance approaches to introduce himself.

(Rylance, seeing Andrew Garfield occupied with far better things, decides not to interrupt. This turns out to be quite fortuitous for the eventual McArdle-Garfield marriage, because Mark Rylance is in fact an actual wizard. He might not have worked  _more_  magic upon Andrew’s cock than James does, but it would have been a close thing.

However, magic or no magic, he wouldn’t have been able to top James for frequency and sheer enthusiasm, so in the end, all’s well that ends well.)


	13. The one where the cast of Angels in America gets high and plays Munchkin

Game nights are supposed to be full of rousing competition, but apparently, game night among the  _Angels in America_  cast just means that instead of sitting around exhaustedly in dressing rooms, everyone sits around exhaustedly at Andrew’s house.

It’s honestly quite relaxing, James thinks, though that has quite a lot to do with the blunt he and Andrew have been passing back and forth. It has even more to do with the warmth of Andrew at his side, leaning his head on James’s shoulder, even though James’s side has kind of gone numb from trying not to dislodge him.

The group is playing Munchkin, and considering how lifeless they all are, it’s actually going quite well.

“No!” Nate shrieks and throws his cards on the table as Denise takes all his treasure, cackling, and adds it to her growing pile of loot. Everyone groans, and James glances quickly around the room to assess how everyone is doing, out of killer competitive instinct that won’t quit just because he hasn’t slept properly in a few days.

They’re spread out, sitting crosslegged around Andrew’s giant coffee table. Lee looks mildly depressed over the state of his hand, but then Lee tends to look mildly depressed about most things. Beth isn’t even looking at the game; she and Susan are giggling into their martinis, but Susan keeps glancing back at her cards. Shrewd, that one, James notes. One to beat.

Next to him, Andrew stirs briefly from his position against James’s shoulder. “How long has this game been going?” he asks blearily, arching his perfect neck and exhaling a plume of smoke. “How has she not won yet, she’s got all the cards!”

James seizes the opportunity while Andrew isn’t leaning against him to jostle some feeling back into his shoulder. He stretches, then slips his arm around Andrew’s waist and shifts to settle him more comfortably against his side.

“Is it because you keep using all your moves to keep her from reaching the last level?” Andrew yawns, running his hand lightly over James’s chest. “Is that why this twenty-minute game has taken us nearly an hour?” James swats his arm, and Andrew hums and tucks himself into the curve of James’s body.

“I take issue with your framing of the situation,” James says.

“Oh,  _Louis_ ,” Andrew says.

“I’m just saying,” says James, “I’m keeping Denise from winning, but I’m also keeping everyone else from losing.”

Everyone else groans.

“You’re incorrigible,” Andrew says. He picks up the blunt he’s been smoking and places it between James’s lips. “And now it’s your turn,” he says as James takes the hit, “and you don’t have any cards left to fight your own monsters. Typical.” James’s lips brush Andrew’s fingers, and Andrew takes the blunt back, watching James through hooded lids as he exhales.

“You know you’re not technically supposed to be a team,” Denise says pointedly. Nate snorts. “They’re not!” Denise protests. “You’re not supposed to be able to see his cards!”

Andrew sticks his tongue out at her. “You should be happy,” he tells her. “You’ve robbed him of his dignity and soon your path to the crown will be clear.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” says James, confident as only the pleasantly stoned can be, “I’m not going to get any monsters,” and he kicks open the door and promptly meets a plutonium dragon.

Andrew bursts into a string of giggles.

“Oh, noooo,” James says, and he’s probably snickering too much because of the weed, too. “This is your fault.”

“How is it my fault? I’ve been trying to save you from yourself.”

“You jinxed me. Somehow.”

“I thought I was your lucky charm.”

“Not lucky enough,” James says, glancing over at Andrew’s cards. He looks around the room.

“Don’t you dare, you cutthroat,” Nate says.

“You have nothing to give me anyway,” James reminds him. “You’ve been razed to the ground.”

“I’ll help you,” Beth says from her corner, “I’m only on level 3, I have nothing left to live for.” She hands James a few cards.

“Don’t encourage his folly,” Andrew says disdainfully. 

“Don’t listen to him,” James says, pressing a kiss against Andrew’s temple. “He always encourages my folly.”

“I could help you,” Denise says, wagging her eyebrows and fanning her giant pile of cards.

“You are not helping me!”

“What?” Andrew swats at the hand James has curled around his waist. “Let her help you! Take away her power, profit from her bleeding heart.”

“I can’t do that, babe,” James says, pinching Andrew’s stomach in retaliation. Andrew jumps and elbows him, so James reaches up and tickles the back of his neck.

Andrew squeaks and turns to him, grinning. “Why not,” he says, in a tone that’s either long-suffering affection or the sound of someone very high, or possibly both.

“Because,” James says, wrapping his other arm around Andrew’s waist and tugging him closer, “if we take things from a powerful sorceress, we get cursed. Powerfully.”

“I thought she was an elf,” Andrew says. He’s frowning, but he’s looking at James and his eyes are soft. “She drew the elf card!”

“I did, but I’m still a sorceress,” Denise says, grinning.

“You have to help save me from getting cursed,” James tells him.

“I stopped paying attention to my cards like ten minutes ago,” Andrew says, leaning forward to brush his nose against James’s, like that’s just a thing they do — and James supposes when they’re both this stoned, maybe it is. “I have no idea if I have anything that can help you fight the, the whatever it is.”

“Plutonium dragon,” says James, letting their foreheads drift together, aware even in his haze that they probably are crossing all manner of inappropriate public displays of affection right now. “And you have two cards that could help me very much, if you wouldn’t mind donating them.”

“Poof,” Andrew says, shrugging. “Take them, they’re gone, they’re yours.”

“Beautiful,” James murmurs, and he doesn’t mean to kiss Andrew, not then, not in front of everyone, not  _ever_ , but it happens without his conscious thought: he cups Andrew’s chin and kisses him briefly but firmly on the mouth, because they’re partners and, and, because that’s the only natural response. Isn’t it?

Andrew kisses back and then blinks at him, blank shock in his eyes. James stares back, grateful that the light fog in his head is keeping him from immediately panicking too much. He searches Andrew’s face for any sign of panic or revulsion, but Andrew just looks startled and surprised and otherwise unreadable.

“So you  _are_  dating, then,” says Nate. He looks at Lee. “You owe me five bucks.”

“They’re not dating,” Lee says boredly. “That’s not how you kiss someone you’re dating.”

“You’re both ridiculous,” James says hurriedly. “Susan, do you have a card? I only need one more level to defeat this dragon and plunder Denise’s treasure, which would let me win the game.”

Susan narrows her eyes at him.

“What do I get in return?” she says.

“You can win with me!” James says eagerly, desperate to keep the conversation going. “I’ll give you half Denise’s treasure and we can level up together.”

“We know you’re just playing dirty right now to distract us from the fact you and Andrew just lost a round of gay chicken,” says Denise. “And I’m your friend, so I’m going to let you, but just be aware, we all know what you’re doing!”

“I am going to demolish you and burn and pillage your castle and keep,” James says calmly. 

“So,” says Susan, even more calmly. “If I give you this card, you beat Denise and win the game, and I get…. a consolation victory, is that it?”

“Er, well, it seems that way,” says James, laughing shrilly. Beside him, Andrew has gone still, and that’s probably not a good sign, but James can’t look back at him right now or he’ll be absolutely sunk.

“Right,” says Susan. “Well, for starters, I want you to kiss Andrew again before he starts getting that dejected puppy look he gets whenever he thinks you don’t love him, and then I want the two of you to go somewhere and figure out whether or not you’re dating, because my lord, it’s game night, not an orgy.”

“I,” says James.”What?”

“We’re not dating,” Andrew blurts, and James turns to him and now he does look a little mortified. James takes his hand and laces their fingers together, because obviously Andrew  _can’t_  look like that, he mustn’t  _ever_ , and Andrew sends him another startled confused glance.

“We’re not dating,” James says, face turning red, gazing back searchingly at Andrew. ”We just…” he swallows and tries to figure out what on earth to say. “We maybe skipped that part.”

“We just,” Andrew stammers. “We just…” he looks at James and smiles at him slowly, helplessly.  “We just belong to each other.”

“Right,” James adds, dizzy. “Because of the play.”

“Yes,” says Andrew, and then, “No. Not because of the play.”

“No?” James blurts.

Andrew gulps and shakes his head, and then they’re kissing for real, a proper Prior-and-Louis kiss, only somehow it’s nothing like Prior and Louis, it’s  _Andrew_ , Andrew who smells like his favorite ridiculously citrusy aftershave and  tastes like salt and grass and vermouth, Andrew who melts into him completely, Andrew who  _belongs to him and always has_.

Another moment, and they’re on the verge of deepening the kiss when they both seem to abruptly recall where they are. They break apart with a gasp and stare at each other, slow dawning smiles replacing their stunned dazed looks.

“Don’t kiss like that onstage,” Lee says dryly. “My sanity can’t take it if they were to extend the run.”

Andrew lets out a hysterical giggle.

Susan says, “That will do, I suppose,” and tosses her winning cards over. James reaches up and thumbs Andrew’s cheek, and Andrew covers James’s hand with his own.

“Look at that,” says James, smiling at him. “Seems like I’ve won.”

Denise sets all her cards down on the table. “Not so fast,” she says. “I think you’ll find I have enough cards to quadruple the fighting power of the plutonium dragon, which means that not only do you  _not_  win, you end up with  _negative_ levels.”

James blinks at her. “You cheeky bastard.” She sends him an exaggerated courtly bow. “You could have just beaten me and saved me the confession.”

Denise grins slowly, and then sends Susan a thumbs-up. Susan laughs.

“I could have,” Denise says. She crosses her arms, smug. “But I like this way much better.”

James splutters.

“Shh,” Andrew says, brushing a kiss over his cheek and leaning his head against James’s temple. “Just let her have this.”

“I’m a terribly sore loser,” James murmurs, pulling him close. ”You’ll have to console me very hard.”

Andrew smiles and presses his lips to the curve of James’s jaw.

“I think I can do that,” he says. “After all — she might have won the game.” He raises his head and winks, and James’s stomach somersaults.

“But I’m pretty sure you’re the one walking away with the flawless victory.”


	14. The one where they break up but then have to see each other again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt requesting the two of them meeting up again after a breakup

It takes four months after they break up for James to finally stop wincing every time he wakes up without Andrew’s too-warm body slung over him. For the sudden memory of Andrew whisking his lips over James’s ear or slipping his arms around James’s waist out of nowhere or filling his apartment with laughter to stop leaving him gut-punched at odd moments. For his body not to tense reflexively every time he sees another beautiful boy with bronzed hair and a deceptively lanky build in a crowd, even though it’s stupid, ridiculous, as if Andrew could ever be interchangeable with any other human being.

So of course it’s right around the four-month mark that Andrew texts him at 3am — his time, because he’s enough of a masochist to be aware that Andrew is back in London, now, too, in-between projects. He’s awake when it comes; he has random bouts of insomnia lately without Andrew, and his mates keep saying that’s because he’s not used to sleeping alone, but James mostly thinks that’s shit and his brain is just too busy to wind down properly, so 3am finds him reading world news like a proper informed citizen and manfully resisting the urge to thumb over to the gossip blogs.

When Andrew’s name flashes across his mobile screen, James feels stricken all over again, stomach clenching, heaving, but his primary initial thought is amazement that Andrew’s been able to keep this number for so long without it getting hijacked by fans. Then he wonders if maybe it was for his benefit, in case James had felt like getting in touch. Then he feels like an ego-inflated prick. Of course it hadn’t been for his benefit, it hadn’t had anything to do with him.

And anyway, he hadn’t gotten in touch.

Andrew’s text reads:  _Listening to the National. I miss you._

James reads it, huffs out an incredulous laugh. Of course, Andrew, who walked out on him, on the best 18 months of their lives, over a throwaway remark he wouldn’t let James take back, would rip off the bandaid with an “I miss you.” As if James didn’t  _know_  that already, the absolute sod. As if Andrew hasn’t been walking around mooning over his loss, listening to James’s favorite bands and pining for him like the woebegotten heroine of a Victorian melodrama. As if that changed anything.

He waits a suitable number of minutes before deciding that it’s not like being awake at ten past three is any less pathetic than being awake at five-of, and hitting send on his response:  _They’re good for that._

 _For making you regret your life choices?_  Andrew responds, too-quickly.

James stares at the phone and tries not to feel faint hope arising in his chest.

 _For making you angst at three in the morning_ , he replies at last.

 _You’re awake, too_ , Andrew responds.  _What are you angsting over?_

James sighs and replies,  _Go to sleep, Andrew_ , because only Andrew Garfield could break up with him and then message him to say he missed him and then bait him, and —

_James. I need to tell you something. Can we talk?_

—and then yank the rug out from beneath his already unsteady feet, emotionally.

James blinks, rubs his eyes, checks to make sure the text isn’t still there.  _I need to tell you something_. There it is, he thinks. There it bloody well is.

 _Just say it_ , he texts, and then, before Andrew’s even had a chance to read that one, he adds:

_You’re going to tell me you’re dating Emma again._

Because he  _knows_  Andrew, he — god help him, still,  _still_ , loves Andrew to the core of himself — and when Andrew had refused to brush off as a joke James’s casual aside about how Andrew would be leaving him for Emma any day now, James had known. He’d  _known_ , and Andrew had reacted with horrified indignation because deep-down they’d both known, and now, here it finally is.

He wants to reply, before Andrew’s even confirmed it, with:  _fuck you_. Or even,  _he loves, but his love is worth nothing_.

But he still, still, loves Andrew with the kind of love that leaves scars, and really the only promise they ever made each other was to try to leave each other as unscarred as possible, in the end.

That promise still holds, at least for him. And he supposes it holds true for Andrew, too, which is why Andrew texted him at 3am to warn him that he’s getting back together with his ex before James had to see the news celebrated all over the media, all over the world.

So when Andrew finally texts back with,  _I wanted you to hear it from me_ , James only says,  _Okay_.

Then he shuts off his phone for the next six weeks.

The benefit of breaking up with someone famous is that you’re immediately forced into dealing with the spectre of their face looming at you from the tabloids section or a sign on a bus. People debate his general existence on the Tube. James’s own relatives once break out a ‘who was the best Spider-Man’ conversation before remembering and sending him horrified apologetic looks. Andrew does a cologne ad for Dior and shows up on billboards throwing that saucy come-hither wink he always manages so effortlessly. James spends a week obsessing over the fact that the Andrew he knew always wore Tom Ford, wondering if that’s changed, if Andrew’s moved on to some newer spicier fragrance or if the ad is a lie, and obsessing over the fact that he’ll never know, now.

And all of this leaves him a mess, at first, but it’s a gauntlet, brutal but effective, forcing him to push through the messiest emotions and move on. He learns to feel nothing when the news of the return of Andrew and Emma makes international headlines. He learns to accept the sheer ease with which the world collectively obliterates all memory of the time Andrew Garfield briefly (18 months, it was  _18 months_ ) dated a Scottish actor no one had ever heard of. He learns to stop reflexively using the phrase “Andy and me” when talking about small things in his life. He learns to separate, as much as he can, the things he carries with him from  _Angels in America_ , and the things he carries from spending four and a half years in love with Andrew. It’s not lost on him that that’s the same amount of time Prior and Louis were together; it’s just not something he can bear. Of all things, piling those losses on top of one another is the part that’s too much for him. He’s always tried to keep Prior and Louis disconnected from Andrew and himself, always tried to see them as separate ephemeral beings who had nothing to do with the way Andrew made him laugh and feel seen, made him want to hope, made him want to worship and adore and protect and nurture every absurdly extraordinary thing Andrew is.

There are countless moments, after he and Andy are over, when he is reminded that it was always the reverse: he and Andrew were always the ephemera; it is Prior and Louis who will, in their dysfunction and hopeless failing love for one another, endure. For his own sanity, he lets go of the idea that they were ever a part of him and not the other way around.

He lets go, he lets go, he lets go; and then six months after the breakup Andrew Garfield is suddenly in front of him at a fucking  _dinner party_ , and James realizes he hasn’t let go of anything. He rounds a corner and sees Andrew there, chatting merrily away with some random aristocrat as if they were the best of friends, as if he’s never been unhappy a day in his life, and James’s world stops.

He didn’t know it was possible to feel this decimated without physically dying; he feels like he’s being crushed, ground slowly into the earth by an invisible giant heel. It’s a formal dinner party supporting some charity arranged through a local theatre, and he’s momentarily furious that no one bothered to tell him who else would be on the guest list, before realizing that it’s possible no one remembered there being any significant conflicts within the guest list, because apparently no one except James even remembers that he and Andrew spent over four years belonging to each other.

Except Andrew looks up, then, and sees him standing there, and it’s clear that he did know James would be here — he goes on hungry alert at the sight of him, full of a yearning that probably matches the look James is wearing, and James, to his despair, recognizes within himself the persistence of a helpless fondness for Andrew that renders him almost horribly amused by the fact that Andrew apparently still wants him, broke up with him while he was still in love with him, tossed all their happiness away on a technical foul, and is now looking at James like it’s a wound James inflicted on him, not the other way around.

James doesn’t know what to do in the moment, so he awkwardly turns and walks out the way he came.

Andrew comes bounding after him and says, “James,” breathlessly, pulling James up short without his conscious permission. He touches James’s arm, and James flinches so sharply Andrew immediately lets go and steps back.

“Wait,” Andrew says. “Please.” James waits, and Andrew, realizing they’re standing in the open, drops his voice. “Don’t be mad. It’s just, you wouldn’t talk to me. Denise told me you turned off your phone.”

“So?”James says, probably edgier and louder than he means to. Great, they’re officially causing a scene. He sighs. “I can’t do this here,” he mutters. “I’m leaving.”

Andrew waits as he collects his coat and quietly follows him out onto the pavement. Outside is worse; it’s rainy and dark and chilly, and anyone could recognize them, or, well, Andrew, but Andrew just shoves his hands in his pockets and says, “James,” again in that pleading choked-up voice.

“You broke up with me,” James reminds him curtly. “I don’t owe you any of my time anymore, or any explanations.”

“You  _do_ ,” Andrew says stubbornly. “I was worried sick about you when you shut off your phone in the  _middle of our conversation_ —”

“Was it the middle? I thought the part where you said you were dating again was the end.”

“I was so worried and I, god, you—” Andrew stops and assesses him. “You look amazing.”

James snorts. “You look like shit.” Because Andrew does, he looks ragged, his hair looks less tidy than James has ever seen it after Andrew’s painstaking daily toilette, and there are circles under his eyes.

“I feel like shit,” Andrew says simply, and leaves it there.

They stare at each other. The rain is pelting Andrew’s already forlorn hair, making his sad puppy look even sadder.

“Fuck it,” James says at last. “I’m getting a taxi, if you want we can talk there.”

He flags down the first hackney that passes and bundles Andrew inside, then asks the cabbie to drive around until James gives him a destination. The driver sets off without a word, and carries them off towards Westminster.

They’re silent for a moment, Andrew watching the raindrops on the window, James watching Andrew.

“What exactly do you want to talk about?” James says at last.

“I didn’t know,” Andrew says. “I—when we fought, it wasn’t because I had secretly made up my mind to start dating Emma again.”

“Really,” James says dryly. “Because it certainly worked out that way, didn’t it?”

“It wasn’t— it wasn’t like that at all,” Andrew says. “The only thing I was thinking about was you not, not  _believing_  in me, in  _us_ , after all this time.”

“You wanted me to believe you weren’t going to do the thing you immediately did,” James says. “Christ, what a fucking gaslight.”

“I did  _not_  gaslight you,” Andrew says, and now he sounds close to tears. “And it wasn’t immediate, I didn’t even think of dating her until  _four months_  had gone by, that’s not some kind of double-cross, that’s, that’s me trying to move on.”

“You could have—” James blurts, and then he forces himself to quit before he says something truly pathetic. Like saying that Andrew didn’t have to move on.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” he says instead. “You’re back with Emma.”

“Was,” Andrew says.

James stares at him. “Was?”

Andrew shrugs and looks at him from beneath his wet eyelashes.

“You barely dated for two months,” James says.

“It wasn’t working out,” he said. “All the problems we had before were still there, only now I’m in a  _completely_  different place, and I’ve got less time for all of the drama than I did before, probably because I’m also still—” He swallows and says heavily, “I’m in love with someone else.”

“You’re—” James laughs, a little hollowly; he can’t help it. He  _knows_  Andrew’s still in love with him, he knew Andrew was in love with him when he walked out. “You threw everything we had built together away,” he says. “You just… walked.”

“I know,” Andrew whispers.

“I tried to tell you it was a giant mistake and you were so, so  _determined_ ,” James says, sounding more bitter than he intends, but unable to help himself. “God, what that did to me, watching you just… just leave and not knowing why, and realizing later that it was because you were still hung up on  _her_  all along?”

“It  _wasn’t_  because of Emma,” Andrew insists.

“Then  _why_?”

“Because I was— I was terrified if I didn’t, you would,” Andrew blurts.

James stares at him, shocked.

“What do you mean?” he says after another moment’s rigid silence.

“James,” Andrew says, pleading and soft. “You were always so sure I had one foot out the door. If not for Emma, then for, for something, for fame, for the next big Hollywood project, whatever gave you an excuse to keep holding back from committing fully to this.”

James stares at him. “You thought I wasn’t committed? To you?”

Andrew’s lip trembles. “You thought it was a fluke. I know you did.”

James sits, stunned. “I didn’t — I mean, obviously, it  _was_. You can’t honestly think you and me, of all the people in the universe, would have ever gotten together, would have even had the time of day for each other, if the play hadn’t brought us together?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Andrew says. “It shouldn’t matter. I work with a lot of random people i have nothing in common with. I don’t fall in love with all of them.”

“It didn’t matter to me,” James says gently, and he can’t resist the urge to reach out and touch Andrew, to,  _feel_  him again. He puts his hand tentatively over Andrew’s, and gratitude flashes across Andrew’s features before he schools them. James wishes he wouldn’t. Now that he’s touched Andrew again —  _Andrew_ — he can’t help but want to unwrap all his outer layers. “It clearly mattered to a lot of people around us. Sometimes that was harder for me to ignore than it was for you. But that never meant I wasn’t committed to you, to us.” He swallows. “Is that really what you thought the whole time?”

Andrew swipes at his eyes. “I don’t know. You were always talking about how we were in such different places in our careers, and it always felt like a, like a challenge I wasn’t going to overcome. You were always overwhelmed by the fact we were each other’s first real boyfriends. You were always talking about how on paper we were completely incompatible, how we didn’t make any sense, how ridiculous it was that we fit so well together. You always made it seem like we were lightning in a bottle, like we were never going to last, and I— I just panicked and kept thinking I had to get out before you inevitably left and destroyed me. Only I just,” and now he’s crying properly, “I just destroyed myself.”

James feels himself rapidly unraveling. He reaches up to thumb Andrew’s tears away, and the moment he touches Andrew’s face it turns into a caress, and Andrew leans into his palm, and James can’t, he  _can’t_  live a life where he never gets to kiss this boy again.

“Andrew,” he says, and it comes out sounding raspy and probably a little desperate, “you know I’m a sarcastic wry fucker and I make light of everything, including us, and absolutely everyone in my life was completely stunned that I went into Angels in America an immature ladies man wanting to shag everything that moved, and came out of it in a queer life partnership with a 80-year-old spiritual guru trapped in the visage of a supermodel—” Andrew laughs helplessly and covers James’s hand with his own.

“And nobody was more surprised than me,” James continues. “And it was a challenge, and it was overwhelming, and it was baffling, and it was scary. But it was also incredible, and amazing, and, and effortless, and it felt real and right and healthier than any relationship either of us have ever had. And I didn’t want to give that up for anything. And if you’d just  _asked_  me, I would have told you that. I thought I’d been telling you, every day. I loved you. I loved what we were together.” He swallows. “I should have fought harder to keep you from leaving. I was in shock. Maybe you were right that I kept expecting it to end, because when it did, I just… I shut down, I told myself that us never lasting was inevitable.”

“We could have lasted,” Andrew says. “We  _should_  have lasted.” He pulls James’s other hand into his lap and laces their fingers together. “We can, still,” he says. looking at James tremulously.

“It’s not that easy,” James says, even as he prays desperately that it  _is_.

“It is,” Andrew says. “We weren’t supposed to be easy the first time around, but we were. You just said we were effortless. We weren’t prepared for it to be that easy. Now we can be.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” James says. “If we didn’t trust each other not to walk out before, now that one of us actually  _has_ , how can—”

“Do you still love me?” Andrew asks him, and there it is.

James breathes in, breathes out.

“I love you with every atom in my blood, you asshole,” he says.

Andrew laughs, looks  _relieved_ , and looks down at their joined hands. He raises James’s hand to his lips, supplicating and beautiful and, oh, god, James can already sense the way his mouth will feel against James’s own after all this time — sweet and pliant and scrabbling for more.

“Well,” Andrew says, “I can work with that,” and James pulls him into his arms and gives him even more to work with.


	15. The one where it's James McArdle's next Tony night and McArfield is real

Unlike Andy, James is not convinced he’s going to win. It’s not a sure thing, not in a category that includes actual celebrities — everyone knows how much the Tonys love paying court to celebrities, even when they don’t deserve it, as James learned firsthand in 2018, thanks, Michael Cera. But then, Andrew had actually deserved the Tony in 2012, only he didn’t win then because the Tony voters were trying to give Christian Borle the Tony for playing Prior the year before, because that’s just how this works, and James knows that even if Andrew won’t admit it.

So, despite Andrew’s frequent assurances to him that he’s got this in the bag, and despite James’s frequent rebuttals that he doesn’t care about awards anyway, James goes into Tony night expecting absolutely nothing, and still afraid, somehow, that he might wind up exposing himself as a fraud in the middle of all this red-carpet bullshit. Andrew, of course, is as stunning and poised as ever, and James keeps pulling him aside just to hold him, just to be close to him and smell his cologne and brush his fingertips against the back of Andrew’s neck, just to remind himself that he’s real, that they’re real.

They’ve been dating for — well, they never know how to calculate it, really, the nebulous grey area that led to their onstage relationship becoming their offstage relationship; but it’s been two years to the night since Andrew won his own Tony and then pushed James against the wall of a random empty room in the Carlyle in order to put an end to months of mutual unspoken pining by  _finally_  kissing James breathless. And that’s about as good an anniversary as any.

“If you win,” Andrew promised him earlier in the evening, his lips brushing James’s ear, “we can re-enact the afterparty.”

“Only if I get to be the one pushing you against the wall this time,” James told him, and Andrew’s grin was a sly, beautiful thing that’s still in place hours later.

 He’s insisted, the whole night, on keeping his hand linked in James’s as they walk the red carpet, and it’s absurd for James to be this touched by this gesture after all this time, but it still astonishes him. For all Andrew is the adorable, absurd, annoying miracle who monopolizes their bedsheets and eats an inexplicable combination of kid’s cereal and protein smoothies for breakfast and bounces between 85 different plans for saving he world during any given day;  for all James knows him inside and out, the knowledge that Andrew is also a  _celebrity_  is always occupying a low-level setting of his brain. 

It’s a faint hum in the background, even as Andrew is aggressively living the most normal life possible: coaxing James to public concerts at the Prospect Park bandstand and then falling asleep with his head in James’s lap, there in the open for anyone to see; dragging him to the Metrograph or the Angelika because he loves the  _idea_  of soaking up rare cuts of Tarkovsky or  _The Virgin Spring_  or what have you, but in reality he’s more interested in snuggling against James and sneaking kisses in the back of the theatre like teenagers; being drawn inexorably into the tea shop on 55th every time they go to Encores because he can’t brew his own pu erh tea to save his life and is constantly pining for a proper cup; trying to convince James that it’s entirely a good idea to pop into Marie’s Crisis and sing Disney medleys like every other obsessed musical fan, completely refusing to accept that everywhere he goes he becomes the story of the moment rather than blending into the moment itself.

But James never forgets that, and James has always seen it as his job, more or less, to make sure Andy doesn’t blunder into a story that could hurt him. He likes to think he usually does a good job at this — and more crucially, that he’s gotten Andrew to be better about it, too —  but he’s been barely keeping his own head above water lately, between the grueling run of the play, and the exhausting ritual of Broadway’s season-long love of forcing its actors to schmooze at parties. 

Andrew always loves that part, though; he makes it seem effortless, and his enthusiasm for it typically carries James along. Having Andrew at his side has made this season’s awards ritual less agonizing for James by orders of magnitude. Yet he’s always aware that in their wake trail rumors and skepticism, the disbelief that Andy has downgraded from bona fide Hollywood starlets to his frumpy Scottish co-star. For Andy, it’s like that part doesn’t exist, he won’t let it into his reality. But that’s why he’s dating James, because James is real enough for the both of them. 

And that’s why tonight has to be perfect, no slip-ups, no hesitation, no lack of confidence: just the assurance that he belongs here, with Andrew on his arm, with the whole world watching. Or more realistically, about 2 million bored CBS viewers with flickering attention spans. So he has to bury the part of him that’s still giddy with amazement that  _Andrew Garfield_  wants to hold his hand in public, and act like all of this is natural. He was born for this, really, he tells himself throughout the night; he was born to be the person on the receiving end of all Andrew’s famously adoring looks of love and loyalty. 

Andrew’s presenting the award for Featured Actress, and there’d briefly been talk at the Theatre Wing of having Emma join him. The theatre gossip is that it was deemed to be too much drama even for Tony night, but James knows what really happened — because he was there when Andrew told the producers no, in no uncertain terms.

“I can’t,” he said, running his hand agitatedly over the arm James wound around him as he was on the phone. “It’s not that I have any problems appearing with Emma. But the moment I do, the media interest becomes about that, and it would overshadow the award-winner.  _And_ ,” he continued, “James is nominated for Best Actor. Tony night is  _his_  night, completely, and you can’t ask me to upstage my partner by staging a public appearance with my ex. No, I’m sorry.”

That word,  _partner_ , still staggers him weeks later. He feels like he’s barely gotten accustomed to the concept of being Andy’s boyfriend; becoming his partner feels like something huge and overwhelming and vast, like a kind of new superhero identity laid out neatly for him if he’ll only pick up the cloak. But they clearly  _are_  partners; they live together full-time, they’ve so thoroughly combined their stuff that James can’t remember whose is whose, and they’ve discussed moving into a bigger house solely so they can have more room for another dog for Ren to play with, which is the most thoroughly domesticated James has ever been or ever will be. Their parents send each other Christmas presents; James’s best friends text Andrew for updates on James’s life when James gets overworked and forgets to check in. Andrew’s gotten him to renege on every heated promise he ever made to never live in New York; it’s so completely Andy’s city, and James can no more imagine living somewhere else at this point than he can imagine waking up without Andrew every morning: it’s a gaping cold abyss of a thought, not to be borne for a moment. 

 _Partner_ , on the other hand: that’s an abyss as well, but a much, much warmer one.

“You look incredible,” Andrew tells him for the umpteenth time that night as James tries to stop fidgeting in his seat. They’re on the front row, though James is well aware that’s a nod to Andrew and the producer’s desire to milk his stardom for all they can. “You are so fucking gorgeous in that suit, I, I honestly, I feel like a Bond girl right now.”

James raises Andrew’s hand to his lips and kisses it.“You are much more longterm than a Bond girl,” he says, and Andrew’s smile in response is so soft and fond that James’s heart actually skips a beat. “Life expectancy’s much higher, also,” he grins, and his face hurts from smiling. 

“Not if I’m having sex with you, it isn’t,” Andrew says dryly, and James nearly chokes, and the 74th annual Tony Awards kick off with a live shot of Andrew Garfield laughing delightedly at a blushing James McArdle as he swats at Andrew and facepalms.

James has spent most of the weeks before the Tonys grooming himself to pull off the look — to be picture-perfect, suave, polished, and precise. He has a speech prepared, of course, but he’s not given it much thought because of course he’s not going to win, and he thinks his main job of the night is just to be the man who doesn’t embarrass Andrew Garfield. it is, after all, the first time he and Andrew have really been caught on camera and broadcast to the world as a couple, and that’s a significant moment.

But he hadn’t anticipated the reality of having a camera shoved unexpectedly in their faces all evening, or the fact that being on the front row means that every crowd shot catches the two of them being, well, themselves. He slowly becomes aware that over the course of the evening, the camera has increasingly focused in on the two of them. But he doesn’t think about what that might be about until a commercial break comes about an hour into the show, when Andrew checks his phone briefly and then says, “Oh, oh, wow,” and shows him the Twitter feed for the Tonys.

He and Andrew are  _all over_  the place. 

James scrolls through gif after gif of the two of them making each other laugh, whispering in one another’s ears, gossiping gleefully about whoever’s onstage, constantly playing with their joined hands, smiling adoringly at each other for no particular reason, James stealing a kiss when Andrew gets up to present his award, Andrew pressing a gratuitous kiss to James’s cheek as they sit down after an ovation, Andrew brushing a kiss against James’s forehead as they come back from commercial, James kissing Andrew’s hand apropos of nothing. 

There’s a Buzzfeed journalist compiling a thread collecting their most romantic Tony night moments, and it’s already gone viral. Another viral thread is from a fan explaining who James McArdle is for the uninitiated, and James is startled to realize that he has fans who apparently keep close track of his career: there it is, laid out for the world to see from RADA to Chekhov. 

The biggest thread is the one chronicling their dating history, and it’s full of gifs of Prior and Louis, as well as a startling number of photos and gifs of James and Andrew together during the time of the show — honestly, before they themselves even understood that they were a thing. A tweet reading, “Get you a man who looks at you like” followed by a still of James smiling at Andrew as he presents his award has over 20,000 likes.

“Jesus,” James says, handing Andrew’s phone back to him in shock.

“Don’t you dare get self-conscious on me,” Andrew says. “This evening’s over half over, I have not yet begun to canoodle.”

“We have a  _hashtag_ ,” James says blankly. “McArfield.”

“We are what the youths refer to as an OTP,” Andrew says. “McArfield is our ship name.”

“Our ship name.”

“I think it’s perfect,” Andrew grins. “Don’t you think it’s perfect? McArfield, it rolls off the tongue like a gentle lyric.”

“I think that somehow this is all your fault,” James says.

“Just enjoy it, darling,” Andrew says. “They love us, and more importantly, they love you, as they should.” James rolls his eyes, and Andrew just beams. “Just remember,” he says, touching his forehead to James’s, “they’ll never love you like I do.” 

“No one else ever could,” James says honestly, cupping Andrew’s cheek, and the end of the commercial break catches them framed that way, just as the camera pans over the crowd.

James tries not to be self-conscious, but it’s hard, especially given the incontrovertible  _proof_  afforded by all that footage of the two of them together that they’re unquestionably together and real and in love. And of course James knows that, but it’s one thing to know that because it’s your normal mundane life and another thing to know that because it’s suddenly a headline. James suddenly feels like maybe all of this is moving too fast — which is absurd, because if he’s being honest, he’s probably been falling steadily for Andrew since about a week into their first rehearsals, all the way back at the end of 2016. And if the intervening four years have felt so much like a waking dream, it’s mostly  _because_  he loves Andrew so much that the constant realization that Andrew loves him back never fails to seem like an impossible fantasy, something James has made all up in his head. Having the impossible fantasy abruptly become a reality recognized by the world at large is… a lot to take in at once.

“Maybe we’ll be a meme,” Andrew says during one break. James sticks his tongue out at him. Andrew elbows him. “You’re overthinking.”

“How are you  _not_  overthinking this,” James blurts.

“Because,” Andrew laughs, like James is the silliest person he knows. “The debate over whether I was the worst Spider-Man will subside for a few hours while everyone freaks out over this, and then things will return to normal and I’ll go back to being endlessly compared to Tom Holland.” 

James sighs. “You’re absolutely right,” he says. “God, what a prick I am to be freaking out about this right now when this has been your life for years.”

“I can tell you one thing,” Andrew says calmly. “You’re already handling it better than any of the people I’ve dated.”

“Even the celebrities?”

“ _Especially_  the celebrities,” Andrew says, looking annoyed at the memory. “Some of them act like any public attention at all is akin to assault. But I think…” He shrugs. “Maybe people are just happy for us.”

James looks at him. “You know what I think,” he says after a moment. Andrew raises his eyebrows. “I think you’re one of those rare and beautiful creatures who is determined to stay completely human, no matter how surreal life gets, no matter how many people come into your life who threaten to turn you into a cynical jaded disaster. And I don’t know how I’m not one of those people for you, but I can tell you that you’re probably the only reason I haven’t been having a giant two-year-long meltdown over all of this.” 

Andrew looks back at him for a long moment. “This is why people are happy for us,” he says finally, sounding choked. “Because they can see…” he waves his hand vaguely between them. “This. What this is.”

“Don’t cry,” says James, as his own throat tightens. “You’re not allowed to cry on Tony night.”

“Don’t be a jackass,” Andrew says, swallowing. “I’m saving my tears for when you win.” He looks at his watch. “Which should be about ten minutes from now, so stop pestering me and rehearse your speech.”

James kisses his hand and laces their fingers together, and they settle in to the home stretch of the awards. Andrew claps ardently and adorably when James’s name is called in the lineup for the Best Actor nominees, and James’s smile is all for him.

“And the Tony goes to,” Sutton Foster is saying, and then there’s a surreal moment when James turns to congratulate the other actor who won only to realize it’s his own name that’s just been called, and Andrew blurts out, “Yes!” and leaps to his feet like they’re at the World Series, and James turns to him in shock and Andrew hugs him fiercely, tears already springing to his eyes.

“I love you,” Andrew whispers, “I love you so much.” James cups Andrew’s face and kisses him deeply, overwhelmed, and there’s a moment when he thinks Andrew’s just going to keep him there, holding onto him forever in this wonderful unreal instant, but a moment later Andrew is releasing him and pushing him forward the few feet onto the stage.

Sutton is hugging him and shoving a trophy into his hand, and James stares at it (a  _Tony_ , wow, it’s so  _heavy_ ), still in shock, and whips out all the jokes he’d half-assedly prepared to thank David and Jonathan for convincing him that 5 hours of Ibsen was what the world needed, and he’s relieved when the audience laughs wildly at his giddy aside that he’s loved doing  _Peter Gynt_  on Broadway because audiences are so impressed that he’s British they don’t care that he’s doing a Norwegian play in a Scottish accent. He pauses and then adds, “And then there are the ones who are still confused about why I’m not Jewish,” and the audience breaks into even louder laughter and spontaneous applause. 

He giggles nervously and looks down to see Andrew sitting just in front of him. He looks eerily like Prior, suddenly: his hands are clasped in front of him like a supplicant, and he’s not even trying not to cry. Their eyes meet, and suddenly all the air leaves James’s body. He gathers himself and clutches his dumb beautiful statuette with both hands and says what he really came to say.

“I’m here tonight because of Tony Kushner and Marianne Elliot,” he says, “who gave me one of the biggest honors of my life three years ago by casting me in  _Angels in America_ —” he rides out the dutiful applause  _— “_ opposite one of the most tremendously gifted and inspiring actors and people I’ve ever known. I adore him more than words, I lean on him every waking moment and he’s always there, and he always has more to give, and—” he swallows. “He’s the love of my life and I wouldn’t be standing here without him. This is for you, Andrew.”

The noise in the theatre is deafening, but there’s a moment when everything whites out around James, and the only thing he’s aware of is Andrew’s face, luminous and lovely, looking up at him with an expression he will never forget.

And then he’s escorted offstage to the sound of the orchestra playing “Moon River,” and he’s so shaken for a moment that he thinks for a panicked second he forgot his Tony award, until he realizes it’s still clutched tightly in both his hands. He spins the famously rotating center, mindlessly thanking all the performers backstage lining up to congratulate him. 

He just called Andrew the  _love of his life_ , in front of millions of people. In front of the whole world. He hadn’t realized until he said it how weighty it would feel, how permanent, how  _real_.

But it is real. All of it — this whole night, the work he’s put in to get here, the support Andy’s given him along the way, the commitments they’ve made to each other. All of it, down to the social media frenzy over their relationship, has happened because they’re in love, because they’ve chosen each other over everything else. 

James suddenly feels more grounded, somehow: suddenly everything in his life seems crystal clear, perfectly in order. It’s so  _obvious_ , all at once: he’s never had to prove that he deserves Andrew’s love. He just has to love Andrew the way he deserves to be loved. 

And he’s always been the best at that.  

At the commercial break, he returns to his seat, and Andrew stands and pulls him into the kind of wordless embrace that makes James feel like his heart might float out of his chest. He’s vaguely aware there are cameras flashing all around them, but he only cares about the look on Andrew’s face when he tilts their foreheads together. 

“Don’t cry, beautiful,” James whispers.

“Easy for you to say,” Andrew says, sniffling. “James McArdle didn’t just call you the love of his life.”

“He might take it back out of sheer mortification.”

“No take-backs.” Andrew smiles messily. “Not now, not ever.”

“So I’m stuck with you forever.”

“Good.” Andrew looks at James with that expression he gets sometimes, when he’s trying to say something as deeply with his eyes as with his words. “I want you forever,” he says. “I want this forever.”

James says, “You have me forever. You have me as long as you want me,” and he’s never meant anything more in his life.

Andrew gazes back at him like they’re in the middle of their own private commitment ceremony, right here in front of the entirety of the American Theatre Wing, and honestly maybe they are. “Tony night is my favorite night,” he whispers at last, and he leans his head on James’s chest, and James holds him tighter than ever. 

They’re going to be in every tabloid on earth in the morning. 

James doesn’t care a bit. 


End file.
